21/12/2020 is the date which will be sharply remembered amongst the skygazers, and astronomy lovers. Today is a winter solstice and The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
Since past few months India was facing many cyclones at the south east coast. Due to the severity of Nivar Cyclone in the south coast, half of the country's sky was covered with rain clouds. Also in, Bhavnagar, a small town in Gujarat, wintery sky was flooded with clouds. A week ago it rained in many villages and cities of Gujarat. But after few days weather was set to normal and sky was clear again.
The conjunction of two planets is a rare phenomenon and it takes centuries to happen. This time conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was of a very short distance and it was measured as .1 degree. In this blog I have uploaded some good clicks and videos about this conjunction.
The below website is very interesting and worth reading. I recommend all the readers to go through this amazing website.
What Is a Conjunction?
Generally speaking, a conjunction is when two objects appear close to each other in the sky. A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn—which only happens about once every 20 years—is called a great conjunction.
In the technical language of astronomers, there are a number of ways to define a conjunction. One way is to say it is the moment of minimum separation between two objects as viewed from the Earth. By this definition, the 2020 great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn will occur at about 18:20 UTC on December 21.
Google Doodle celebrated winter solstice and the Great Conjunction 2020.
The day prior to the Great conjunction in Gujarat Samachar's supplementary magazine Ravipurti, an article written by Harshal Pushkarna was worth reading. This article set me to schedule the live watching of this conjunction.
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It was visible all around the globe, and in Bhavnagar it was visible from 18:35 onwards. Let's see how it looked in Bhavnagar.
Setting up the tools
During the wait, the Moon was glittering in the clear blue sky.
The sunset.
Again Moon in the fresh evening darkness.
And finally, the duo appeared !!! Can you spot the planets ??? Small White dot.
Let's dive in ...
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| The Camera shook at the moment of click but see how Saturn looks. Zoom in to see big image. |
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| Take a full screen zoom to see the conjunction. |
These two images are a surface result of 80 failed clicks. The aluminum tripod is still not stable enough to click such far sighted spatial objects. Even while touching the shutter of the digital camera, entire camera was trembling as if it might have felt the minus degree temperature cold. While clicking this rare event, much of the hard work was done to setup the shutter speed and aperture, timer and ISO to make the best out of the clicks.
This was a very memorable experience for me in 2020. This blog will stand as an inventory of this astronomical phenomenon which will again take place in the year 2080.
Thank You!
Reference:
Jones, Graham. "Great Conjunction 2020." Timeanddate.com, www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/planets/great-conjunction.
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