Sky & Telescope - May 2021 - 13

COSMIC RELIEF by David Grinspoon

The Cosmic
Conjunction
When the world's got you down,
look up and tune into orbital time.

TO M PO L A K IS

JUST AS THE HELLACIOUS year of

2020, so full of loss, conﬂ ict, cynicism, and pain, was drawing to a close,
we Earthlings were treated to a rare
and stunning celestial arrangement as
the two bright gas giants Jupiter and
Saturn pulled to within a ﬁngernail's
width of each other on the night of the
winter solstice.
For those of us attuned to the heavens, such a sight is not only a delight
in and of itself, but it can pull us out
of our quotidian reality. We enter into
sky time, recalling other spectacles,
other times and places when the stars
aligned for us. We remember our
favorite eclipses, rare meteor showers,
auroral light shows, the few really good
comets that have offered themselves to
our close inspection, and those bright
planetary congregations we've witnessed during our few orbits.
My own wedding came (not by coincidence) on a summer solstice coinciding with a choice conjunction of the
crescent moon with two bright planets.
For me, every planetary conjunction
now has a little of that night in it. Each
watcher has their own associations,
and these peak sky happenings stitch
our life's journeys together at a scale
beyond the day-to-day.
These memorable sightings also
bind us to human lives before and
after our own. My grandmother, who
is no longer with us, was not impressed
with the apparition of Halley's Comet
in 1986. To explain why, she drew me
a picture from memory of the truly
magniﬁcent appearance in 1910, when
she was only 10 years old.
The previous close meeting between
Saturn and Jupiter came in 1226 (not

S The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, as seen just after sunset on December 21, 2020

counting their discrete 1623 rendezvous, when few likely saw them
consorting so near to the Sun). Seen
only with naked eyes, that was the last
pre-telescopic, pre-Copernican superconjunction. Not too long after that,
we learned what the planets really are
and, concurrently, that our own world
is also a planet that could be seen
wandering through the skies of others.
With that knowledge, we'll never see a
conjunction the same way again.
This orbital dance also connects
us to geologic and cosmologic time. It
has been proceeding since long before
there were humans, or hominids, or
mammals, or any creatures with eyes
who might have noticed.
Beyond the simple aesthetic enjoyment, why are these cosmic conﬁgurations so compelling?
Conjunctions, along with eclipses
and cometary apparitions, have long
been seen as omens. It's not hard to
imagine why. The wandering planets,
by nature of their capricious movements, can appear to possess agency
and awareness. When they cross paths,
it highlights their apparent personalities, almost as if they were greeting

one another, or perhaps conspiring. In
truth, the awareness exists only down
here in the eyes of the beholders.
We don't need to think of such
alignments as portents to appreciate
the wisdom in the perspective they
bring, to delight in the reminder of the
rhythmic and harmonious cosmos we
occupy, and to feel enmeshed in their
movements. After all, it is the shifting parallax of our view from Earth's
orbit, the fact that we observe from a
moving platform, that makes Saturn
and Jupiter seem to rush together and
then part so rapidly. This is a dance we
participate in.
When the world feels momentarily
dark, celestial spectacles can connect
us to places and times that transcend
our immediate worries and remind us
of the wider landscapes we inhabit.
Jupiter and Saturn will pass each other
this close again on March 15, 2080. I
won't get to see that one, but I'm glad
some of you will.

Astrobiologist DAVID GRINSPOON,
an S&T contributing editor, is author of
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our
Planet's Future.
s k y a n d t e l e s c o p e . o r g * M AY 2 0 2 1

http://www.skyandtelescope.org

Sky & Telescope - May 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - May 2021