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On Monday (December 21), Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer in the night sky than they had been in 800 years. To the naked eye, this “Great Conjunction” looked like a single massive celestial object shining above the Earth. But with telescopes – and consumer cameras fitted with telescoping lenses – the planets showed their individual faces in stunning detail as they roamed the sky.
Florian Kriechbaumer, a photographer from the United Arab Emirates, captured the heavenly spectacle of one of the most rewarding places on Earth: near Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. In a large parking lot in front of the skyscraper (which is 2,720 feet or 830 meters high), Kriechbaumer filmed the conjunction for 45 minutes, capturing the moment the two planets moved closer to each other (since His point of view) .
You can see his results in the time lapse video below, which condensed the entire shoot into about 20 seconds.
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“When I shot these, there were a few clouds, so I couldn’t wait to be able to capture them,” Kriechbaumer told Live Science in an email. “Fortunately, they opened at the right time. Seeing the rings of Saturn and Jupiter with some of their moons appearing side by side in your viewfinder is an incredible moment.”
“Everyone should go out and experience looking at the planets and the night sky once in their lifetime,” he added.
Superb as it appears from Earth, Saturn and Jupiter were not particularly close to each other during the conjunction, Previously reported Live Science. Jupiter is currently about 550 million miles (890 million kilometers) from Earth, or about 5.9 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, while Saturn is about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km ) from Earth, which is approximately 10.8 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. The planets were still 724 million km apart from each other. They are looking at us simply because Jupiter’s orbit has brought it into the line between Earth and Saturn.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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