Once every 400 years

…and thanks to the British weather, we almost missed it.

With Jupiter and Saturn both appearing quite early in the evening, and quite low to our horizon, the timing was always going to be tight to be able to enjoy the planetary spectacle. 

We had experienced  poor visibility for much of the week leading up to the conjunction… and then, as you can see on this Hyperlapse, we caught short glimpses in breaks in the cloud … just enough to get the scope setup and focused:

The 20th even gave us a short shower, requiring us to shelter the scope inside the back doors.
On the downside, this meant no auto tracking, but on the upside it meant we got to enjoy some music, and had the fire going, so despite the back doors being wide open, it was actually a lovely and comfortable setting for viewing!

Finally, the clouds parted and we had a good 30 minutes of clear skies and great viewing. The 4 of us enjoyed watching it live, quite and incredible spectacle, to be able to see both planets and a handful of moons in the same view, and without even needing the reducer.
Then eventually I swapped over to the DSLR and captured some images, with the below image formed from a composite of 3 images at different exposures (though the positions remain unaltered).

Epilogue: the peak conjunction on 21st December (2020) was a total wipe out - rain and cloud gave zero visibility for any viewing this night…. and so I feel extremely grateful that the night before we were able to have such a great viewing experience of this once in a lifetime event.
I also feel that our decision to invest in the telescope during the first lockdown 6 months ago has given us fantastic returns.