Grand Conjunction

Grand Conjunction – Photo: L. Weikel

I received the most amazing of gifts today. Seriously. It felt surreal when it all unfolded and almost feels more so as I sit here looking at the photographs I took documenting it. Right before our very eyes, Karl and I witnessed the Grand Conjunction reveal itself from behind a thin layer of clouds, Saturn and Jupiter beaming their conjoined brilliance toward us within the span of two thrilling minutes, and then disappear once again.

We decided to time our walk to take place just as the sun slipped below the horizon. I’d had my eye on the Weather Channel since this morning and knew a cloud cover was moving in, with rain predicted in the early evening. The likelihood of personally witnessing this cosmic event in our area was viewed with increasingly universal pessimism. As you can imagine, given the way I’ve been rather zealously documenting Jupiter’s approach to Saturn over the past few months, I was disappointed, but not surprised. The weather seems to do this to us humans a lot.

Turkey

Even though I’ve not mentioned it lately, Karl and I still choose Medicine Cards^* every morning. My pick today was Rabbit/Turkey, which means my ‘main’ choice for the day was Rabbit, while ‘underneath’ (on the bottom of the deck) was Turkey.

The keyword for Rabbit is Fear. There’s a whole medicine story of how Rabbit became associated with fear in some Native American traditions, but that didn’t seem particularly applicable, at least not today. I joked to Karl when I read it that maybe it was a reflection of my fear that all the unfortunate weather predictions would come to pass and we wouldn’t get to see the Grand Conjunction.

“But look!” I exclaimed, flashing the bottom of the deck in Karl’s direction. “I got Turkey underneath! Maybe the clouds will part and we’ll experience something magical.” I said that because Turkey’s keyword is “Giveaway.” And amongst its many messages, probably the most foundational inference of Turkey is that a gift will be received.

As the day wore on, we noticed how one instant the sky would be remarkably clear and then half an hour later a cloud cover would move through. This changeability persisted all day, and the hourly forecast on my Weather Channel app did not bode well.

Timing Our Walk

As I said, we timed our walk to hopefully snag a glimpse of the celestial event within a random gap in the clouds. Just after setting out, on the first leg of our usual journey, I stopped and took a photo of the southwestern sky. The prospects looked grim, with only a small band of clear golden light encased between layers of thick looking cloud cover.

Outset of our Walk 12/21/2020- Photo: L. Weikel

We walked all the way around our usual two mile jaunt. As we breached the final hill where I take almost all of my best photos of the night sky (and where I’ve taken virtually all of the incremental shots of Saturn and Jupiter that I’ve included in my posts), we lingered. I felt like we might see them. The cloud cover looked like it was thinning a bit and I yearned to just wait there as long as we could.

But honestly? It felt like a fool’s errand. A wish that held precious little likelihood of manifesting. So we walked home, bummed knowing that we’d never get to actually see this Grand Conjunction, as the next time these planets will be this close and in this conducive a position to be seen won’t be until 2080.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to give up so easily – and to my delight, neither did Karl. We walked home and took Spartacus’s coat off, and said I was going to drive back to the top of the hill to sit there for a bit and see if the clouds parted like I felt they might. He agreed.

We drove around the circuit three times. Breaching the hill the final time, I decided to take a photo of the cloud cover. The least I could do would be to jokingly post a photo of the spot in the sky where I knew it was taking place.

The Gift

The following photos were taken as follows: #s 1-2 at 5:38, #s 3-4 at 5:39, #5 at 5:40, and #6 at 5:41. As I’ve said many times before: YCMTSU. We saw it. We really truly actually had the Grand Conjunction reveal itself over a span of two minutes…and then disappear once more.

It started to rain less than ten minutes later.

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