Google, in collaboration with NASA, has replaced its homepage logo in the northern hemisphere with an animated doodle that celebrates the winter solstice and suggests you keep your eyes on the sky for the current “great conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter.
This year, December 21 marks the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and, on this longest night in 2020, an incredible, astronomical event, known as the “great conjunction”, will be displayed. The great conjunction is a visual overlap of Saturn and Jupiter, the two largest planets in our solar system, in the night sky.
Specifically, Saturn and Jupiter will be 0.1 degrees apart. While the great conjunction takes place approximately every 20 years, the last time the event was as easily visible in the sky as it will be for this winter solstice was near 800 years ago.
To mark the two occasions, Google collaborated with NASA to create an animated doodle depicting the great conjunction as cartoons Saturn and Jupiter meeting for a maximum speed of five, and the winter solstice as the “snow-covered” Earth that look at the other two planets. .
Google and NASA have offered some tips on how to best see this spectacular conjunction tonight – especially on December 21, 2020, the night of the winter solstice.
- Find a place with a clear view of the sky, such as a field or a park.
- An hour after sunset, Jupiter will look like a bright star and will be easily visible in the southwestern sky. Saturn will be slightly weaker and will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter until December 21, when Jupiter will overtake him and reverse positions in the sky.
- Feel free to use the binoculars, but the planets can still be seen with the naked eye.
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