The stargazers will have a great time four days before Christmas. Jupiter and Saturn will align to create the ‘Star of Bethlehem’ in nearly 800 years.
On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will align and create what is known as the ‘Christmas Star’ or ‘Star of Bethlehem’, a fact that has not been seen in 800 years.
In fact, the two planets have not appeared so close together from Earth’s point of view since the Middle Ages.
“Alignments between these two planets are quite rare, occurring about once every 20 years, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to be to each other,” Patrick Hartigan, a Rice University astronomer, told Forbes.
“I would have to go back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.
“On the closest night, December 21, they will look like a double planet, separated by only one-fifth the diameter of the full moon,” Hartigan said.
“For most telescopes, each planet and several of its largest moons will be visible in the same field of view that night.
“The farther north a viewer is, the less time he or she will have to glimpse the conjunction before the planets sink below the horizon.
Andrew Jacob, the curator of the Sydney Observatory, told ABC that the planets will be so close to each other that you can see them through the eyepiece of a telescope.
“I would be lucky to see this once in my life,” he said.
Astrophotographer Anthony Wesley also told the publication that he has been observing the two planets from his property in Rubyvale, central Queensland.
“I think they will actually look their best from a naked-eye perspective in the first week of December,” Wesley said.
“They are a little higher in the sky, and if people are in villages with street lights, you have a little more chance to see them before they go down too far.
According to Forbes, a star sighting of this proportion will not occur again until 2080.
