{"id":116772,"date":"2020-12-07T13:25:54","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T21:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/jupiter-and-saturn-will-come-within-0-1-degrees-of-each-other-forming-the-first-visible-double-planet-in-800-years"},"modified":"2020-12-07T13:25:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T21:25:54","slug":"jupiter-and-saturn-will-come-within-0-1-degrees-of-each-other-forming-the-first-visible-double-planet-in-800-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/jupiter-and-saturn-will-come-within-0-1-degrees-of-each-other-forming-the-first-visible-double-planet-in-800-years","title":{"rendered":"Jupiter and Saturn will come within 0.1 degrees of each other, forming the first visible \u201cdouble planet\u201d in 800 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/jupiter-and-saturn-will-come-within-0-1-degrees-of-each-other-forming-the-first-visible-double-planet-in-800-years.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlignments 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 one another,\u201d Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan said in a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.rice.edu\/2020\/11\/19\/christmas-week-worlds-will-align-for-spectacular-heavenly-sight-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">statement<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aligning with the winter solstice on December 21, 2020, the two planets will be just 0.1 degrees apart \u2014 less than the diameter of a full moon, <a href=\"https:\/\/earthsky.org\/astronomy-essentials\/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">EarthSky<\/a> says. The word \u201cconjunction\u201d is used by astronomers to describe the meeting of objects in our night sky, and the great conjunction occurs between the two largest planets in our solar system: Jupiter and Saturn.<\/p>\n<p>The planets will be so close, they will appear, from some perspectives, to overlap completely, creating a rare \u201cdouble planet\u201d effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAlignments 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 one another,\u201d Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan said in a statement. \u201cYou\u2019d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}