When the moon is in the 7th house...

 

... and Jupiter aligns with Saturn.

If you said, "Jim, you messed up the words to Age of Aquarius from the the Broadway production of Hair," you get 20 bonus points.  The real words are "Jupiter aligns with Mars."

But, last night and tonight, if you have a clear sky, you can see Jupiter and Saturn very close together (the "great conjunction").  The last time this occurred at night (when you could see it) was in 1226... I was just a kid at the time, so I don't really remember it.

We call it a "great" conjunction because to ancient skywatchers, these were the two slowest moving planets in the sky.  Jupiter takes nearly 12 years to describe a full circle in the heavens, spending a year visiting each zodiacal sign in the sky, while Saturn takes 29.5 years to make one full trip around the sun. Because of their respective slow movement, a conjunction or — to the ancients — a "celestial summit meeting," was rather unusual. Such get-togethers happen, in most cases, about every 20 years on average.  But on Dec. 21, we see Jupiter and Saturn separated by just 6 arc minutes. That's equal to 0.1 degrees or about one-fifth the apparent width of the moon.

For those keeping track, this is also the Winter Solstice.  Some say this may have been that "Christmas star" (star of Bethlehem) that three wise guys were following a couple thousand years ago.

Last night, we went out on our deck to check it out.  Yep - with a pair of stabilized binoculars, we could see both; but, no camera equipment I have has enough focal length to capture that.  We do, however, have an app that tells us what we are seeing in the night sky...