Jupiter and Saturn are in their closest conjunction 4 centuries ago

In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei directed his telescope to the night sky and discovered the four moons of Jupiter, and in the same year Galileo also discovered a strange oval shape surrounding Saturn, which later observations identified as the rings of the planet , and these findings changed the way people understood the dimensions of the system. Solar.
Thirteen years later, specifically in 1623, the two giant planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, traveled together across the sky, and Jupiter was able to catch up with and overtake Saturn, in an astronomical event known as of “Grand Couplage”.
The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occur every 20 years, the last of which dates back to the year 2000, but these conjunctions are not all equal, and the conjunction that takes place today (Monday) will be the closest since 1623, and it will not be repeated from this end until March 15 of the year. 2080, according to a report released five days ago by the US Space Agency (NASA) website.
“You can imagine the solar system as a race track, where each of the planets runs in its own path and the Earth runs towards the center of the stadium,” says Henry Throb, astronomer in the Department of Planetary Sciences at NASA headquarters in Washington . “From our perspective, we could see Jupiter. On the inner corridor, it approaches Saturn throughout the month of December, until it reaches the closest point on December 21, and then the exceeds.
Throb directs those who wish to observe the phenomenon to the need to seek out a place where there are no obstacles to vision, such as a field or a garden, and an hour after sunset he looks at the sky of the southwest, where Jupiter will appear as a bright star and can be seen easily with the naked eye, and Saturn will be slightly faint. It will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, you may be able to see Jupiter’s four large moons orbiting the giant planet, and the brightest moon in the world. Saturn, Titan, will also be visible.
While this historic conjunction occurs on the same day of the winter solstice, the American astronomer says the timing is just a coincidence, based on the orbits of the planets and the tilt of the Earth. He adds: “It should also be noted that the approach between the planets is only done by observation from Earth, because they are located on the same line of sight from Earth, but the fact is that these planets will remain in the hundreds. millions of kilometers in space, because Jupiter is located at a distance of 886 million km. From Earth, Saturn is at a distance of 1,620 million km. “