On the night of the winter solstice, a rare cosmic event known as planetary conjunction occurred while two of the largest planets in our solar system passed side by side.
During the conjunction, also called the “Christmas Star”, Jupiter and Saturn seemed to unite for a few brief moments and shine like a bright double planet, when in reality the two planets were more than 400 million miles away. distance.
Stars, astronomers and photographers threw away their best cameras and telescopes to document the spectacular event. The Deseret News captured several photos of the West Desert in Utah, which can be viewed in this gallery.
Here are some other images (via ScienceAlert.com):
Ed Piotrowski, posted the chief meteorologist for the ABC-15 WPDE in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this image of the planets on his Twitter account:
NASA Earth official Twitter account posted a gorgeous image of planets reflected in a body of water – as well as Google’s cartoon about Saturn and Jupiter high:
Tom Kierein, posted a retired author and meteorologist this wonderful image of the largest four months of Jupiter, Saturn and Jupiter on his Twitter account. According to Kierein, the photo was taken by Sajal Chakravorty in Melbourne, Australia:
The great conjunction. Jupiter and the largest 4 months (550 million miles away) and Saturn (1 billion miles away). Image of the telescope in Melbourne, Australia by Sajal Chakravorty pic.twitter.com/q5971CTD4A
– Tom Kierein (@TomKierein) December 22, 2020
Matt Newey, a photojournalist from Utah, posted this image of the conjunction reflected in the Great Salt Lake on his Instagram account:
A Bay Area landscape photographer named Jim Tang captured this incredible image of the conjunction shining over the San Francisco cityscape and shared it on Instagram: