Christmas is over, but the amazing "Christmas conjunction" is still underway. As seen from NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft, the three planets Venus, Earth and Jupiter are clustered in a circle barely 2 degrees wide. The spacecraft's Heliospheric Imager took this picture on Dec. 26th:
Because of the holidays, this conjunction in space raises comparisons to a famous Christmas conjunction on Earth. According to some scholars, the Star of Bethlehem might have been a close encounter between Venus and Jupiter. The two brightest planets in the night sky, merged, would have made a spectacle so amazing that we still talk about it ~2000 years later.
Unlike conjunctions of the distant past, this one includes our home planet. STEREO-B is located on the far side of the sun where it can look back and see Earth along with other worlds in the Solar System. From STEREO-B's point of view, Jupiter and Venus about 0.5 degrees apart. That is not nearly as tight as the putative Star of Bethlehem conjunction when those two planets were separated by as little as 6 arcseconds (0.00166 degrees). Nevertheless, the Christmas conjunction of 2013 is special because it includes Earth--the first time in history [a photograph of] such a conjunction is possible. Happy holidays from STEREO!
www.spaceweather.com
Unlike conjunctions of the distant past, this one includes our home planet. STEREO-B is located on the far side of the sun where it can look back and see Earth along with other worlds in the Solar System. From STEREO-B's point of view, Jupiter and Venus about 0.5 degrees apart. That is not nearly as tight as the putative Star of Bethlehem conjunction when those two planets were separated by as little as 6 arcseconds (0.00166 degrees). Nevertheless, the Christmas conjunction of 2013 is special because it includes Earth--the first time in history [a photograph of] such a conjunction is possible. Happy holidays from STEREO!
www.spaceweather.com
RSS Feed