I was sad that we had cloudy weather on the night of the planetary conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn. While alignments of these two planets happens about every 20 years, this was the closest the planets have been together and visible at night since March 4, 1226—a once-in-a-lifetime event!
The next day was cloudy too and I had all but given up on seeing the “Christmas Star” but at around 3:30pm the sky started to clear in the southwest which is exactly where the planets would become visible.
I watched a flock of geese fly over just after sunset while anxiously hoping more clouds would not roll in and block the view.
There were still streaks of orange in the sky when the planets appeared. They did indeed look like one giant star.
And with binoculars I could even see two of Jupiter’s moons.