While many of us on Earth were craning our necks, trying to get a glimpse of the so-called “Christmas Star” earlier this week, a robotic spacecraft orbiting the moon was able to swing its camera around for an out-of-this-world photo of the celestial event.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) got a photo of “The Great Conjunction,” which is when the big gas planets of Jupiter and Saturn get so close in the sky they appear to meld into one bright object from far away. A similar planetary conjunction may have been what gave rise to the phenomenon of what some call The Star of Bethlehem or The Christmas Star. And while Jupiter and Saturn have a conjunction every 20 years, this year was predicted to be a rare sky show not seen in 800 years because the planets were going to appear so close at a time when many people could witness it.
Cloudy skies got in the way for many skywatchers in Michigan. But the LRO probe on the moon had no such problem. While the LRO’s camera captured the planets looking farther away from each other, it did show Saturn’s rings when the brightness was amplified a bit.
“The LROC NAC captured this view just a few hours after the point of closest separation (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 that Jupiter and Saturn appear closest is fleeting; a day later (22 December) you can look up and see the two planets already appear farther apart. Due to the varying time that each planet takes to orbit the Sun, the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn only happens about every twenty years, and a conjunction this close is even rarer – the two planets will not appear this close (0.1° separation) again until March of 2080.”
The LRO launched in 2009 and plans are to keep it orbiting the moon for the next six years, when the fuel is expected to run out, according to Space.com.
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December 27, 2020 at 12:23AM
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NASA probe gets ‘Christmas Star’ photo while orbiting the moon - MLive.com
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