Did you see the great conjunction?

It was a marvelous sight on Monday, witnessed around the world — the close conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. I hope you had a chance to see it, wherever you were. For me, it turned out to be a great and memorable event.

I was at the local University of Calgary observatory, helping out with a public viewing session our Calgary astronomy community had organized. The evening started out clear and mild, and we had about 100 people show up, at dinner time on a Monday night, to take in the show. And the sky came through.

Not only did we have the Moon and planets performing, but as the sky was getting dark, and right on cue, we had a brilliant Iridium satellite flare appear just to the left of the planets. For a few seconds another bright “star” exploded into view in the sky, outshining even Venus and Jupiter. That prompted a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd.

Then, not two minutes later, the Space Station rose into the west and made a pass straight overhead, like a blazing star traveling across the sky. Well, people loved that! Great cheers went up from kids and adults alike, as we all waved to the astronauts. A crowd-pleaser for sure.

Then, as my time-lapse video shows, the clouds began to thicken, ending the sky show. No matter — we’d seen what we came for. In another hour snow was beginning to fall. We’d gone from autumn to winter in a few hours.

So what did you see? What was your experience? Send us your story by clicking the Comments link below. Or better yet, send us your photos at this link.

If you’d like to see some samples of what other people around the world saw and experienced, do head over to one of my favorite sites, Spaceweather.com. Curator Tony Phillips does a great job compiling galleries of celestial images from around the world.

But this time, Tony comments, “In the 10-year history of Spaceweather.com, no single event has generated more photos than this one. Submissions have poured in from six continents, dozens of countries, kingdoms, democracies, theocracies, ships, planes, cars, and even from a military aircraft refueling 35,000 feet over Iraq.”

That’s a telling statement. This truly was a great conjunction — and a worldwide event. It was a wonderful example of how astronomy and the sky know no borders. As the group Astronomers Without Borders points out, “Boundaries vanish when we look skyward. We all share the same sky.”

You’ll see abundant evidence for that in the Conjunction galleries you’ll see posted in the next few days at Spaceweather.com. All over the planet we all saw the same event. Yet, due to differences in our latitude and longitude, we all saw it a little differently — the position of the Moon, the angle of the planets, the landscape below.

But we all experienced the same wonder. One photographer in Pakistan said, “It was like a great face in the sky. People in Pakistan had never seen anything like this before.” From Iran, in broken English, came this comment, “The sky, another time, show his kindness to us.” Please be sure to look at the images from Iranian photographers — they are taking some of the most evocative images of the night sky I’ve ever seen.

So here was an event that mirrored what should be our global experience — yes, we all see things a little differently, but those differences are what make all our experiences interesting and worth sharing. And yet, at heart, our experiences evoke the same emotional response in us all. We all share those same feelings, just like we all share the same sky.