The Top 10 Skywatching Events to Look for in 2020

[Admin]

Here are the 10 most noteworthy sky events — including meteor showers and eclipses — that will take place in 2020.

The Top 10 Skywatching Events to Look for in 2020 : Read more

 

[rod]

Very nice, Top 10 list here for 2020 celestial events coming. I am glad to see there are no *alien observation events* that stargazers using their telescopes can see when the aliens are peeking at us from some, remote portal in 2020

 

[Hawkstein]

The Jupiter / Saturn conjunction is kind of cool for astronomers... but no great naked-eye comets makes 2020 kind of a dud for me.

 

[rod]

The Jupiter / Saturn conjunction is kind of cool for astronomers... but no great naked-eye comets makes 2020 kind of a dud for me.

FYI, I ran a simulation using Starry Night and Stellarium for the 21-Dec-2020 conjunction. This very close conjunction may be great to view in small telescopes. Jupiter and Saturn are about 0.1-degrees apart or 6 arcminute angular separation. A telescope at 100x to 200x or more, may show some great views of both planets in the eyepiece. However, this is near sunset time and for my location, good views near 1730 EST, SW sky and lower elevation near 15 degrees altitude. Jupiter will be about 5.9 a.u. from Earth, Saturn about 10.8 a.u. from Earth. The last *great naked-eye* comets I observed were Hyakutake in April 1996, and Hale-Bopp in April 1997. In December 2018, I enjoyed some very good views of 46P/Wirtanen comet using my 10-inch Newtonian.

 

[Hawkstein]

FYI, I ran a simulation using Starry Night and Stellarium for the 21-Dec-2020 conjunction. This very close conjunction may be great to view in small telescopes. Jupiter and Saturn are about 0.1-degrees apart or 6 arcminute angular separation. A telescope at 100x to 200x or more, may show some great views of both planets in the eyepiece. However, this is near sunset time and for my location, good views near 1730 EST, SW sky and lower elevation near 15 degrees altitude. Jupiter will be about 5.9 a.u. from Earth, Saturn about 10.8 a.u. from Earth. The last *great naked-eye* comets I observed were Hyakutake in April 1996, and Hale-Bopp in April 1997. In December 2018, I enjoyed some very good views of 46P/Wirtanen comet using my 10-inch Newtonian.

I'm kind of hoping I'm still alive for Halley's comets return in 2061, but hopefully there some other great naked-eye comets before then. I don't consider myself an astronomer though, I have a good pair of binocs but no telescope.