Great Conjunction - Jupiter & Saturn - 2020 DEC 21

[saac]

On 22/12/2020 at 08:56, maw lod qan said:

Turned out the clouds stayed away.

I was expecting them to be a little closer together. Even with my eyes, I could easily see there was two planets.

I wonder as the evening progressed it more to the West in the USA if they did get a little closer?

One of the better close up photographs I've seen , well done. They look splendid  

 

Jim 

[maw lod qan]

45 minutes ago, saac said:

One of the better close up photographs I've seen , well done. They look splendid  

 

Jim 

Thanks! Just a lucky single image with my dob and Canon.

What made the evening fantastic for me was the brother I've hunted and fished with forever came over to look through the scope!

It's those moments that make it special for me!

[CentaurZ]

I noted in my original post that occultations of Saturn by Jupiter are exceptionally rare. And we also don't see mutual planetary occultations very often in the cases of any pairs of planets. We are currently in an unusually long dry spell. The most recent case was an 1818 occultation of Jupiter by Venus, with no observation reports. The only report ever of a mutual  planetary occultation was by an amateur astronomer who observed Venus occulting Mercury in 1737. The next mutual planetary occultation will be when Venus occults Jupiter in 2065, but that will be almost impossible to observe with an elongation from the Sun of only 8˚. 🙁

[goodricke1]

1 hour ago, CentaurZ said:

The only report ever of a mutual  planetary occultation was by an amateur astronomer who observed Venus occulting Mercury in 1737. 

 

Here is an account of that solitary historic observation. Even in this case however, the planets were only 1.4 degrees above the horizon, and John Bevis did not witness the actual moment of occultation. So there is no complete record of such an event in all human history -

http://www.bogan.ca/astro/occultations/1737occl.htm