Jupiter and Saturn descend on the tallest building in the world in an epic video entitled “A Great Coupling.”
On Monday (December 21), Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer together in the night sky than they did in 800 years. To the naked eye, this “Great Connection” looked like one huge celestial body shining above the Earth. But for telescopes Consumer Cameras with Telescopic Lens – The planets showed their individual faces in stunning detail as they wandered across the sky.
Florian Krishbaumer, a photographer in the United Arab Emirates, captured the celestial view from one of the most sky-scraping locations on Earth: near the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. In a large standing area on the other side of the skyscraper (which is 2,720 feet or 830 meters high), Krishbaumer filmed the pairing for 45 minutes, capturing the moment when the two planets approached each other (from his vantage point).
You can see his results in the interval video below, which condensed the entire shot to about 20 seconds.
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“When I photographed these there were some clouds, so I was anxious even if I could catch them,” Kriechbaumer told Live Science in an email. “Fortunately, they opened up at the right moment. Seeing the rings of Saturn and Jupiter with some of its moons appearing next to each other in your camera lens is an incredible moment.”
“Everyone should go out and experience looking at the planets and the night sky once in their life,” he added.
As amazing as it appears from Earth, Saturn and Jupiter were not particularly close to each other during conjunction, I mentioned Live Science earlier. Jupiter is currently located about 550 million miles (890 million km) from Earth, or about 5.9 times the Earth’s distance from the sun, while Saturn is about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) from Earth, or about 10.8 times the Earth’s distance from the sun . Relative to each other, the planets were still 450 million miles (724 million km) away. It looks close to us because the orbit of Jupiter put it on the line between Earth and Saturn.
Originally published on Live Science.
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