See the “Christmas Star” in Rare Astrological Event on December 21

On the last solstice of 2020 (Dec. 21), Jupiter and Saturn will appear the closest together in the night sky in 4 centuries.

Some parts of Earth’s northern hemisphere have been feeling chilly weather for weeks now, but the official beginning of winter occurs on the solstice. This is the point when the daytime is at its shortest in one hemisphere and when daytime is the longest in the other hemisphere. Dec. 21 is the summer solstice for the southern half of planet Earth.

This year, the solstice happens to converge with a “great conjunction” that some have christened as an early “Christmas star” because of its occurrence near the holiday.

A conjunction happens when planets appear incredibly close to one another in the sky because they line up with Earth in their respective orbits. Over the first three weeks of December, Saturn and Jupiter can be seen near the southwest horizon in the hour after sunset slowly getting closer with each passing night, according to a NASA skywatching statement about this month’s nocturnal highlights. When these two planets converge on Dec. 21 they will be the closest they’ve been to one another in the night sky since 1623, according to Joe Rao, instructor at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. But that conjunction wasn’t visible to skywatchers on much of the Earth because of its location in the night sky. The last time the event was visible from most of the Earth was in 1226, according to Virginia Tech astronomer Nahum Arav. – from Space.com