..when the change is due to come.”

On the first day of winter, 21 Dec, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction, within a tenth of a degree of one another. It will be their closest encounter since 1623! The conjunction and the solstice are totally unrelated events, but the astrologers will be having fits as they will occur only 4 hours apart. Surely, that must mean SOMETHING.

Both planets will be within 30d of the Sun, so there is only a narrow window after sunset when the event will be visible in the southwestern sky. But the two planets will be within 1d of each other between the 12th and 29th of the month, so it will be worthwhile to monitor them for a week or so before and after the event so you can see them moving relative to one another.

Jupiter is the bright one, at mag -2.0. Saturn will be about ten times fainter, at mag +0.6, but still a bright, first magnitude object. And don’t forget Mars, the bright red one (rapidly fading this month from -1.1 to -0.2) high in the sky.

You have been warned.