It's truly sad that the sky has so many wonderful things to offer us while we're stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tonight the sky will offer us another wonderful thing, what will it be? On Thursday night, the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter will form a triangle. The crescent moon will be visible in the southwest as the sky darkens, and the other two planets will appear shortly after. Jupiter should appear after sunset, and Saturn a little later.
“The best time to see the triangle is about 30 minutes after sunset for about two hours, while the moon and planets are high enough in the sky to be nicely visible,” says astronomy educator and former planetarium director Jeffrey Hunt, who has detailed the event on website called When the Curves Line Up.
Hunt says the view will remain good for about four and a half hours after sunset. Saturn appears a little later because it is less bright than Jupiter, he says. The brightest stars appear in the sky after sunset, while the less bright stars appear later.
And you don't need any special equipment. Hunt says "a pair of binoculars or a small telescope will show lunar craters (and) the moons of Jupiter. If the binoculars are held steady, some of Jupiter's larger moons are visible. The small telescope will show the rings of Saturn."
If you miss Thursday night 's show , you'll have a chance to see more celestial spectacle in December. Hunt notes that there will be another conjunction of the moon and Jupiter and Saturn on December 16, when the planets will be closest together.
That's just five days before a long-awaited event called The Great Conjunction, which will occur on December 21. Hunt explains that when the moon or a planet is at the same celestial longitude as another celestial object, we call it a conjunction. Jupiter passes Saturn in conjunction every 19.6 years, so this event is truly rare, but the December 21 event will be the closest conjunction of the two since 1623.
