Planet Scenes December 2020
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On December 27, Jupiter was pulling away from Saturn and is now 42' 30" past his older fellow pagan deity. Both are solidly in Capricornus now, not to see each other again until 2040; on October 30, 2040, the two planets will pass each other in Virgo at about 1° 8'. At that time, both Saturn and Jupiter will be north of the ecliptic, but Saturn much more so. |
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On December 22, Jupiter and Saturn have started separating and this evening are 10' 30" apart, about 4' more than last night. It was noticeably easier to separate them with the unaided eye this evening. The weather was nice although the view of the two planets in the eyepiece (at either 66x or 100x) was grainy owing to the poor seeing and the fact that my telescope hadn't had time to cool down yet. |
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On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn were closest in our skies, appearing only 6' 18" apart this evening. It miraculously cleared up in the afternoon and gave all of us a nice view of the conjunction across the cornfield to our west. I was able to just barely detect Saturn on the limb of Jupiter with my glasses on! |
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On December 18, Jupiter and Saturn have closed the gap to 19' and are getting close enough now that Saturn is beginning to be difficult to see. Their closest approach is only 2 and 3 days away, but in our area the weather is forecast to be cloudy for a longer period of time than that. On this evening the clouds only departed around 6:30 and the Moon was still in the area, brightening the sky. Unfortunately there seemed to be more planes than usual flying southward across the field of view, so every picture I took had to be edited to remove the offending dotted lines! They really should ground all air traffic on evenings of significant celestial events :) |
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On December 15, Jupiter and Saturn have closed the gap to 39' and are beginning to look like a remarkably close and bright double planet. On this evening here in central Virginia, an approaching winter storm gave us haze and clouds that made the view very fuzzy; not uninteresting visually, but not great at all for imaging. Unfortunately, the forecast is for bad weather all the way through the conjunction on the 20th, so sky watchers are keeping their fingers crossed. |
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On December 2, Jupiter and Saturn have closed the gap to 2°3' and were set nicely in a clear sky that should have afforded a nice opportunity for a wide angle view of the planets and the horizon with twilight for context. |
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