A little bit of magic happened last night…
If you follow the stars in the sky and you managed to catch a glimpse last night, then you are one of the lucky ones.
December 21 was a very special night as two huge planets, Jupiter and Saturn, were visible from the earth.
Jupiter and Saturn aligned in the nighttime sky for the first time in 800 years, meaning they were directly in line with each other creating a huge super star visible by all of us here on earth.
These two planets are the largest in the solar system and very rarely get as close as they did this year.
Prof Tim O’Brien, an astrophysicist from the University of Manchester, told BBC News: “Conjunctions are great things to see – they happen fairly often – but [for the planets to be this close] is quite remarkable.”
People around the world watched the sky last night to see the the incredible event, called the conjunction. Some were even able to get pictures of the once in a lifetime occasion.
As always, the pictures don’t do the event justice, but we can only imagine that in real life, the two planets would have lit up the sky.
Some people have nicknamed this sparkle of light the Christmas star. Astrologists even say that the giant star the three wise men followed over two thousand years ago to Bethlehem was a result of a conjunction like this.
The paths of planets cross every twenty years, but these occasions are so rare to see because they usually cross paths during the daytime.
