2401: Conjunction

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Conjunction
The IAU is sad to announce that at 00:39 UTC on December 22nd, Jupiter and Saturn did unfortunately come into contact, and appear to have blooped together.
Title text: The IAU is sad to announce that at 00:39 UTC on December 22nd, Jupiter and Saturn did unfortunately come into contact, and appear to have blooped together.

Explanation

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Cueball and Ponytail are observing the 2020 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. This is similar to other comparisons between expectation and reality. The expectation is that the scientists will remain professional through the event, testing Einstein's theory of General Relativity and using official terms such as arcminute, while the reality is that they actually treat the event quite whimsically.

The title text references the misconception that the planets physically get very close at conjunction, rather than merely appearing to do so. If they really did come into contact and "blooped together", most of the mass would stay collected as an extremely hot and turbulent blob that would eventually settle down as a new planet, but more than a bit would be spewed outwards. The possible outcomes vary enormously, depending on factors such as how direct the impact was, and its alignment relative to the planets' spins.

Transcript

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What people imagine astronomers observing a conjunction are like
[Cueball and Ponytail are both looking through telescopes]
Cueball: 6.15 arcminutes!
Ponytail: Stupendous! This confirms Einstein!
What they're actually like
Cueball: Wow! Look how close they are!
Ponytail: It's so cool!
Cueball: Now kiiiisssss!!
Ponytail: Dooo iiit!


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Discussion

It appears (depending upon how keen DgbrtBOT actually is) that this was posted at the significant time as mentioned. Though it's entirely within range of usual update time, I suspect this is not a coincidence. (Where I am, partly the weather but overwhelmingly the horizon obscured the moment of closest approach, but I did get a shufti earlier last night when there were fewer clouds in the sky for at least some of the time between sunset and planetsset. It took binoculars to key my eyes into where the dimmer Saturn was, but once I knew what I was seeing it was obvious enough.). Oh and, purely coincidentally, Happy Solstice everyone! 141.101.107.160 00:58, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

"...if they appeared to have boinked, it would have confirmed the weak cosmological constant, which we are very glad is not a thing." ocæon (talk) 14:23, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this is really that interesting (in the technical sense) to astronomers. Although in theory there could be gravitational lensing of Saturn's image by Jupiter's gravity, I'm pretty sure the effect would be too small to bother even trying to measure.108.162.241.18 14:49, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Astronomers might not say that, yet people might say that astronomers might say that. (Astronomers thus aren't people. And the rules require no more than three fragments of astronomer per kilo of Soylent Green before the Food Defect Action Levels are invoked.) 141.101.98.176 15:31, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
The whole point of this cartoon is that lay people don't realize how boring something like this is to astronomers -- it's just a coincidence with little scientific import. But astronomers are people, too, and they can enjoy the esthetics and have fun with it. Barmar (talk) 00:33, 24 December 2020 (UTC)