After midnight tomorrow, Wednesday, the skies of the Arab world will see a rare conjunction between the planets Jupiter and Mars at 02 Mecca time and for the rest of the night, as they will be separated by a small fraction of degree (0.3 ) on the eastern horizon, which makes them appear “outside” almost touching in a phenomenon visible to the naked eye It will not happen again until December 2033.
The head of the Astronomical Society in Jeddah, Engineer Majid Abu Zahra, said that with the naked eye it is possible to see the bright white light of Jupiter and see the fainter and redder glow of Mars, show that it is possible with binoculars. to see the four great moons of Jupiter, as this conjunction will be an amazing event for telescope owners and photographers, the two will be close enough to appear together in the field of view of the telescope.
Abu Zahra said: “A conjunction occurs when planets appear close to each other in the sky from our perspective on Earth, and the distance between objects usually changes during the conjunction from 0.5 degrees to 9 degrees, and sometimes the planets come closer – as it happened. in conjunction with Jupiter and Saturn in the year 2020.” When separated by less than 0.1 degrees, it is called a “Grand Conjunction.”
He pointed out that Mars and Jupiter will appear much closer to each other than in the past, but in reality they are separated by great distances in space, as Mars’ orbit is closer to the the sun in the orbit of Jupiter, that is. about 3.5 times the distance from the Sun, indicating that they are not really that close, as it happens because Earth, Mars, and Jupiter are roughly aligned in space and on the same side of the solar system.
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