Tuesday, December 01, 2020

checked out conjunctions

Did some checks in Stellarium... I want to get clear about an astronomical conjunction. There are two occasions or situations it seems...

Both images show the equatorial grids lines. I have Stellarium set into Equatorial Mode so that orients the grids nicely. North is up; east is left. 

Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction by RA

The objects can have the same Right Ascension (RA). You can see that Saturn and Jupiter are aligned on the RA axis. They are near the 20h 11m 5s mark. 

Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction by longitude

Next I zoomed out a bit to draw in the ecliptic line. I selected one of the planets to reveal the data. Note the ecliptic longitude: same. You can see the J2000 value for Jupiter: 300° 9' 40".

The time is around 9:00 AM Eastern on 21 Dec 2020. That matches up with the RASC Observer's Handbook.

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