Rare ‘Christmas Star’ will light up the sky on winter solstice

NASA officials say this “great conjunction” won’t be seen again until 2080

From KSAT.com:

As Christmas nears, astronomers are urging citizens to look to the sky in a few weeks to witness something not seen in almost 800 years.

From Earth’s viewpoint, Jupiter and Saturn are getting very close to one another and will look like a double planet when they appear to nearly collide on Dec. 21 — the date of the winter solstice — forming a rare phenomenon known as a “Christmas star.”

“Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to be to one another,” Patrick Hartigan, an astronomer at Rice University, toldForbes.