🪐The evening sky over the Northern Hemisphere treated stargazers to a once-in-a-lifetime illusion as the solar system’s two biggest planets appeared to meet in a celestial alignment that astronomers call the #GreatConjunction reut.rs/38vtUFy 
The rare spectacle resulted from a near convergence of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn that happened to coincide with Monday’s winter solstice, the shortest day of the year
For those able to observe the alignment in clear skies, the two frozen-gas spheres appeared closer and more vibrant - almost as a single point of light - than at any time in 800 years
🔭 Jupiter - the brighter and larger of the pair - has been gradually nearing Saturn in the sky for weeks as the two planets proceed around the sun, each in its own lane of an enormous celestial racetrack, said Henry Throop, an astronomer at @NASA
At the point of convergence, Jupiter and Saturn appeared to be just one-tenth of a degree apart, roughly equivalent to the thickness of a dime held at arm’s length. In reality, of course, the planets remained hundreds of millions of miles apart, according to @NASA
🌎 Read more on how Earthlings were treated to a rare alignment of Jupiter and Saturn reut.rs/38vtUFy by @peszeke
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
