BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Two more days to the Great Conjunction

In a planetary conjunction, planets appear close to each other in the sky. Jupiter and Saturn have been edging closer together for several months now. On Monday, December 21at - the winter solstice - it will almost seem that there's only one planet. The event is called a "great conjunction" when Jupiter and Saturn are particularly close together - this year's great conjunction is the closest since 1623.

Sky & Telescope shows what to look for in the sky.

Remember: the planets are only close as seen from Earth! They'll be around 500 million miles (800 million km) apart.

I'm excited and looking forward to this event. I hope we have a clear night.

Google has a cute doodle to celebrate the Great Conjunction. On the Google search page I can't get the animation, so not as impressive as it might be. However I found a page with the animation, which is quite cute. Jupiter and Saturn meet

I looked for it but the sky was not cooperating and I don't know how low on the horizon it was. We have so many trees around us.

Angie, I knew I wouldn't see it because of the weather. From my location, it's also fairly low, though I did see the two planets about a month ago one clear evening. Last night, even without cloud cover, I'm not sure what I'd have seen.

At your latitude, it would have been low, but should have been visible . . . with a clear southwestern horizon . . . soon after the Sun went down.

For future reference, if you don't already use Heavens-Above – website, it's worth a look. You can get a sky map of your location (or other location) for any time past, present or future.

I saw two bright spots last night not that far from the moon.

Angie, that sounds exactly right.