Carol and I saw the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction on Sunday night December 20, 2020 at 5:10 PM CST, which is a day before the closest approach on Monday December 21, 2020. Seeing both planets in the same high power view (203 power with my Celestron 8 inch telescope with a 10mm lens) was very cool. I saw 4 of Jupiter moons. On the left (west compared to Jupiter) was Europa and Io and on the right Ganymede and Calisto. There was a star between Ganymede and Calisto that looked like a 5th moon but that is unlikely because the remaining moon are too dim. Analysis on the Internet said the separation between the 2 planets was 8.2 arc minutes, at my time my viewing, which is very close to the minimum occurring on Monday night with 6.3 arc minutes. The full moon by comparison is about 30 arc minutes or one half of a degree. Surprisingly, Saturn which is the dimmer planet, is to the north of Jupiter, so the ecliptic is not a perfect path for planets. It looked like the rings of Saturn are angled at 45 degrees compared to the plane of the moons around Jupiter. It has been a while since I had my telescope out, so I'm glad Carol was there to support me during my frustration with focusing my Celestron. The focusing knob has about 30 turns to it and I'm never sure when a good focus is coming. The crescent moon provided a good object to test it. I was also surprised on how fast the planets were setting in the south west. By 5:30 PM they were setting behind my neighbor's house. The planets will be pretty close for the upcoming week, so I encourage anyone to take a look any near future clear night. Good luck.
Midwest Astronomy and Space Society
