"Hello Everyone! The curator is bringing you the Astronomy Forecast…" Two exciting astronomical events are coming up in the last month of 2020!

From 4 to 17 December, the Geminid meteor shower is here again. In Hong Kong, the meteor shower peaks at around 2-3 a.m. of 14 December. Since the Moon will be very close to New Moon that night, moonlight will not be going to interfere with our observation of meteors. Given fine weather, if you go to a dark place with little light pollution, you can expect to see 20 to 30 meteors per hour. Among all the meteor showers of 2020, the Geminid meteor shower definitely boasts the best viewing conditions!

After the Geminid meteor shower, Jupiter and Saturn will have a celestial rendezvous known as the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction which occurs approximately every two decades. The two planets are now apparently getting closer to each other in the western night sky every day, and on 21 December, they will be so close that a casual look would find it difficult to tell them apart. This will be their closest encounter since the same event in July 1623. However, although Jupiter and Saturn look so close from our viewpoint on Earth, they are actually separated by about 730 million km, or 480 billion times the social distance of 1.5 m. So it is very safe for them to greet each other in the vast expanse of the Universe.

And that's all for now for the astronomy forecast. If weather permits, we will have live coverage for these two spectacular events on our YouTube Channel. Stay tuned!