Two Giants Meet in the Sky

Jupiter and Saturn meet in the sky… it’s a conjunction!  Their closest appearance will be right after sunset today, December 21st, 2020.  Here’s the view 10 days ago on December 10th and they’re about the moon’s width apart:

Clouds obscured the view off and on Monday evening (Dec. 21st), but it was still visible at times:

Here’s the view through an 8″ Schimdt-Cassegrain type telescope on the 20th:

I combined three different levels of exposure above to mimic what you see with your eye through the telescope because a single camera exposure just blows out Jupiter and Saturn to make the moons visible.  (Note the view is also inverted left to right in a Schimdt-Cassegrain telescope due to the final angled mirror in the light path.)

Here’s video of all three nights through the telescope: