Stargazers got an incredible treat this week when Jupiter and Saturn appeared to align perfectly in the sky in a rare event called the “great conjunction”. Although the planets’ positions align around every two decades, this is the first time they have appeared so close together in hundreds of years.
“You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky,” said Patrick Hartigan, an astronomer at Rice University.
In reality, the two gas planets were hundreds of millions of miles away from each other, but from the naked eye down on earth, they were just 0.1 degrees apart, which is less than the diameter of a full moon.
Photographers around the world took some incredible photos of the Great Conjunction that will fill you with wonder. If you’d like to see images from this celestial sight, have a look at this gallery right here.
Image source: Rodin Eckenroth
