I remember as a young kid hearing about Halley's Comet and that it will make it's next appearance in our sky in 1986. I was so enthralled at this exciting opportunity to observe this comet as it was going to be visible to the naked eye, no telescope needed! So I waited.
When it had been last seen in 1910, some people overreacted claiming 'end of world prophecies' (we're too mature for that attitude today, aren't we?). What will happen in 1986? As a kid I wasn't concerned about prophecies. I was going to see a bright glowing comet with it's long tail, night after night for a number of weeks, as it approaches the sun then moves back out into the deepest reaches of our solar system, only to return again in another 76 years.
Come 1986 I was staring at the night sky with eyes wide open...and saw nothing. It was not the spectacular event I had been anticipating for 25 years, it was nothing more than a distant blur. Utter disappointment. But that didn't affect my interest in astronomy. I am not an astronomer, I don't own a telescope and I can't see too many stars in our night sky.
Today, I use a phone app called 'Sky Safari' to observe our solar system and the stars in our heavens. As I delved into this app, I quickly realized there was a problem with Astrology's interpretation of the Zodiac. The sun was never where Astrology said it was and in addition they were often wrong on where the planets were. I set the date, because I can time travel with this app, to my birthday. Astrology says my sign should be Libra, but the app showed the sun near the beginning of Virgo. Now I'm not into Astrology and horoscopes so I didn't care what my sign was, but many people, I realized, were being misinformed about their actual sign.
So I set about to determine the actual date and time the sun actually begins to cross a constellation's border (it takes 16 hours for the sun to completely cross a border). Just to confirm my astronomical dates, I checked other astronomy websites to find my dates agreed with there's 100%. What would be your sign if you were born while the sun was on the border? I'll let you decide.
Last year, with this app, I could see the future conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that would be visible on Dec 21st, 2020 at around 5:30 pm just as the sun is going down. I watched as this event unfolded in the night sky for months, both visually and also on the app, as both planets entered into 'retrograde' (appearing to go backwards over time), then stopping and going forward again. I was anticipating this event, watching for it, waiting.
Then it happened just as I had expected, it went as planned and on schedule. I got a terrific view of ... cloud covering the entire sky for a full week. I didn't see it until the 23rd, still a view to witness.
In the image from Sky Safari we see Jupiter and Saturn with visible moons on that day but you would have had to look just around sundown at 5 to 5:30pm.
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