Jupiter and Saturn 'Great conjunction' on Winter Solstice

On 21 December 2020, the planets aligned, appearing closer than they have since the middle ages, in what is being called a 'Christmas kiss'

On the 21 December solstice, the planets will look like one brilliant star as Jupiter's and Saturn's 12- and 29-year orbits bring them together. The last great conjunction was in May 2000, but its position in the sky meant it was difficult to see. The great conjunction of 1623 (when Galileo Galilei was still alive) was also hard to spot because, the Perth Observatory explains, it appeared close enough to the sun that it would have been "lost in the sun's glare".

"You'd have to go all the way back to just before dawn on 4 March 1226 to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky," according to Patrick Hartigan, an astronomer from Rice University in Texas.

It is suspiciously near to Christmas day. Is there any relation to the Star of Bethlehem?

 The Star of Bethlehem that guided the three wise men to the place of Jesus Christ's birth may have been a great conjunction, too. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains, several conjunctions occurred "within 10 years of the chronological point now taken as the beginning of the Christian era".

One of these was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which in 7BC were within one degree of each other three times in eight months. The Star of Bethlehem could also have been Venus and Jupiter, which in 2BC, "would have appeared to observers in Babylon to have merged just before setting in the general direction of Bethlehem to the west".

In 2020, the celestial phenomenon will be visible from anywhere on Earth, but conditions will be best near the equator, according to Hartigan. The Christmas "kiss" - as...