Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum here. Despite this most recent orbit being dominated by earthly struggles, has been an incredible year for astronomy. Whether it's SpaceX making headlines by launching Starlink satellites to provide WiFi for the world, or sending astronauts to the International Space Station twice, or the unexpected delight
of watching Comet Neo wise journey across the sky. There have been some inspiring reasons to keep gazing up all year long. Before the ball drops and we reset our calendars, there's one more spectacular astronomical experience to mark on your calendar, the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December one. This celestial event is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the gas giants of our Solar system appears so close together in the sky that they'll appear to touch.
They won't, in act, and will actually be four hundred million miles apart. It's all a matter of perspective based on their orbits Jupiter, which orbits the Sun every eleven point nine years, and Saturn, which orbits once every twenty nine point five years, and the two planets appear close together roughly every nineteen point six years, but when they do, it's called a great conjunction, and the last one occurred in the dawn hours of May twenty eight, in the
year two thousand. This year's great conjunction is particularly special as it's the closest these two planets will appear in the sky since March fourth of twelve, twenty six, and so it's been nearly eight hundred years since Jupiter and Saturn have appeared this close together due to the two
planets orbits as well as our earthly one. Although there was a close Jupiter Satder conjunction in sixteen twenty three, it was too near to the Sun to be seen without a telescope and so was likely not observed by many, the telescope being a new object at the time. This year, the planets will appear very close, less than one fifth the diameter of a full moon, or roughly zero point one degrees apart in the sky. Astronomers use degrees as the largest unit of distance between objects in the sky.
Most times, when two planets appear close together, there within two to four degrees of one another. To get a sense of how close Jupiter and Saturn will be in the night sky on the twenty one. Hold your arms straight out and make a fist, then stick up your pinkie finger at arm's length. The diameter of your pinkie finger is roughly equivalent to one degree of distance in the sky. Jupiter and Saturn will appear one tenth of
the diameter of your pinky apart. With Saturn and Jupiter being so close together, they may look like a double planet. If you have a telescope, you should be able to see both planets and their larger moons in the same field of view, but they'll be fairly clear even through binoculars and visible to the naked eye. The Great Conjunction will be visible across Earth, though the timing will depend
on your location and latitude. The best viewing prospects are near the equator, though those in the northern hemisphere will have a shorter viewing window before the planet's set beyond the horizon. For American viewers, the best time to observe this maybe twilight. You can look for them anywhere from December seventeen th December, though the closest approach is December one. And even though we had a very long wait to see this event, it's going to happen again on March
fift a relatively short sixty years from now. Today's episode was written by Valerie Stymach and produced by Tyler Clay. For more and less amounts of other topics, visit hous to forks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio. Or more podcasts my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.