The second has arrived. Hold your fingers crossed for clear skies tonight and no matter else you’re doing, make the try to see the extraordinary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
Often known as a grand conjunction, the road of sight to every planet is now mendacity so shut to 1 one other that you’ll in all probability not be capable of distinguish them as separate objects. Discover someplace with a transparent south-western horizon and search for the brightest factor you may see, low within the twilight sky: that object can be each Jupiter and Saturn.
The chart exhibits the view trying south-west from London on 21 December at 1700 GMT, however the conjunction can be seen all over the world quickly after the solar goes down. Don’t be late, the planets will set early within the night.
The final time the planets had been this shut from our viewpoint on Earth was nearly 400 hundred years in the past on 16 July 1623. In fact, the planets aren’t actually shut collectively, Jupiter is at the moment 886 million km (551 million miles) from Earth and Saturn is one other 733 million km past it. They occur to lie in the identical route. The conjunction is seen from most components of the planet.