A rare astronomical event that may resemble the biblical Star of Bethlehem will take over the skies shortly after sunset on the shortest day of the year, Monday evening.
According to a report from NASA, Jupiter and Saturn, the two largest planets in the solar system, will align in the night sky for the first time in nearly 800 years. Astronomically, this is known as a “Great Conjunction.” Monday night, the two planets will appear a tenth of a degree apart in the night sky.
Planetary alignments of Jupiter and Saturn in the sky actually occur about once every 20 years, Dr. Paul Adams, Dean of the College of Education and Anschutz Professor of Education and Professor of Physics at Fort Hays State University said.
The uniqueness of this event, he said, comes from the fact that this will be the closest the two planets have appeared together since 1623. It is the first time this conjunction has occurred at night in nearly 800 years.
Though the planets will appear very close together, they will actually remain about 456 million miles apart in space.
“This is a good one to get out and see, because (Jupiter and Saturn) won’t appear this close again until 2080,” Adams said.
“No one (currently alive) has seen this with their eyes, because it’s just been too long since they’ve been this close together.”
On Monday, when the two planets align, they will appear as a single bright point of light in the southwestern sky in Kansas. Because of the event’s proximity to the Christmas holiday, the event has become known popularly, as the “Christmas Star.”
However, Richard Sloan, a Barton Community College adjunct science instructor who spent 24 years with the National Weather Service, said this had led to misconceptions about what the true “Star of Bethlehem” actually was.
According to Sloan, the celestial event known as the Biblical “Star of Bethlehem” was actually believed to have been a triple conjunction of the planets Jupiter, Venus and the star Regulus, which occurred around June 17, 2 B.C. This particular event last occurred in 2015, according to Sloan.
Over the next few days in the Great Bend area, National Weather Service forecasts call for clear to partly cloudy skies in the evenings Sunday and Monday as the two planets draw closer in the sky between the two evenings.
According to NASA, the best time to view the phenomenon will be about an hour after sunset Monday. Sunset that day will be 5:16 p.m. in Great Bend that day.
Sloan said those looking for the event should look about 20-30 degrees above the horizon.
BCC will not be holding any public viewing in connection with Monday night’s Great Conjunction.
FHSU, Adams said, will have be viewing Monday evening behind Wooster Place Apartments along Dwight Drive on campus in Hays. He indicated they will have a telescope set up on a bridge along the walking levee over Big Creek. The event is open to the public, he said, but social distancing and mask guidelines will enforced and the telescope will be sanitized after each use.
