! ! ! Astronomical Alert ! ! !

Tonight, 21 December 2000, the two largest planets - Jupiter and Saturn - are about as close to one another in the sky as they can get.

Just after sunset if one has clear skies, one can see these two giant planets by facing southwest and lifting one's head just a mite.  To the naked eye it will appear as two very bright yellow-orange stars very, very close together.

They won't be this close again for the next 400 years.  Poor old DonDiego has faint hope of witnessing this next conjunction.  

Ref: The Washington Post  for all the cool details.

* If the weather's bad, . . . try again for a few days as the planets slowly drift away from one another.

Ref: NASA Tips

And they were considerate enough to schedule this during the longest night of the year, giving us that much more chance to observe their conjunction. Truly, the planets have mankind's best interests at heart.

(I'm being facetious, obviously, but this is exactly how pseudoscientists of bygone centuries would have interpreted the phenomenon.)

Why doesn't this comment surprise anyone?

How do you know it doesn't surprise anyone? Did you take a poll? Please note, you would have to poll everyone in the world--myself included---to make the statement "this comment doesn't surprise anyone" anything but a Boiler-style lie.

I observed the conjunction earlier this evening. I'm sure there is a Trumper conspiracy theory already on Facebook about how it indicates that the universe says Trump really won the election. I breathlessly await David Miller's posting of that theory.

Why doesn't it surprise anyone that Boiler is still trying to enrich his desperate little virus-spreading life by making gratuitous comments about other people?

The conjunction looked pretty cool; I just wish I had a good telescope. I hope someone publishes the image somewhere.

Kevin Lewis hope is answered: 

Jupiter Saturn Conjunction

Thank you for the images! I wonder why Saturn appears only slightly smaller than Jupiter, despite the fact that it's almost twice as far away and considerably smaller to boot.

I plan on going there when Elon Musk perfects transwarp travel.