I don’t quite get the excitement over what is being called the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn tonight. This happens about every 20 years and it is just a routine consequence of the way Earth lines up with the two planets with particularly slow orbits around the Sun in relation to us. Such celestial conjunctions happen all the time not just somewhere in the universe but even within our own solar system.
Lest you think that Jupiter and Saturn will actually merge, when all that is happening is that they are aligning in our line of sight, you would be not just wrong but foolishly wrong. The two remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space and exercise no impact on each other or us. Other than the visual spectacle such closeness of alignment from our vantage point it means absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the only unusual aspect of the conjunction is as NASA describes it, “It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this “great conjunction.””
It takes Jupiter 12 Earth years and Saturn 29.5 years to complete an orbit around the Sun. I am guessing the figure of such summits occurring every 20 years or so comes from the average of their orbital time but I could be wrong.
The point is you are at perfect liberty to feel excited at such humdrum stuff but I am not. It is like eclipses. They mean nothing.
