While many of us on Earth stretched our necks and tried to catch a glimpse of the so-called “Christmas Star” earlier this week, a robotic spacecraft orbiting the moon could swing its camera around for an outsider. world photo of the celestial event.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) got a picture of “The Great Conjunction,” which is when the great gas planets of Jupiter and Saturn are so close to the sky that they seem to merge into one bright object from afar. A similar planetary conjunction may have given rise to what some call the Star of Bethlehem or the Poinsettia. And although Jupiter and Saturn have a conjunction every 20 years, this year was predicted to be a rare sky show that hasn’t been seen in 800 years, because the planets would appear so close at a time that many humans could witness them.
Cloudy skies got in the way of many Michigan skywatchers. But the LRO probe on the moon had no such problem. While the LRO’s camera captured planets farther apart, it did show Saturn’s rings as the brightness increased slightly.
The LROC NAC captured this image just hours after the closest separation point (0.1 °) between the two giant planets. With the sharp focus … you can see that the two planets are actually separated by about 10 Jupiter diameters, ”the LRO staff said on its blog.
[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
“The constant motion of the planets means that the moment when Jupiter and Saturn appear closest is fleeting; a day later (December 22) you can look up and see that the two planets are already appearing further apart. Due to the varying time it takes each planet to orbit the sun, the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn only occurs about every twenty years, and a conjunction this close is even rarer – the two planets will not appear so close (0.1 ° separation). until March 2080. “
Launched in 2009, the LRO plans to keep it in orbit for the next six years, when it is expected to run out of fuel, Space.com said.