Nightsky Watching
Kamal Lodaya

BOX
Take this map to a place where the sky when you face North is dark and there are no lights in that direction. East is where the Sun rises in the morning.
The map shows stars seen at 9 pm on 1st December (the previous day was Full Moon), 8 pm on 14th December (New Moon) and 7 pm on 30th December (Full Moon).
Take a few minutes to let your eyes get adjusted to the darkness. Then you will start seeing stars.
Use a small torch (maybe from your phone) covered with red paper to give a soft red light to the map. Red light interferes least with your ability to see things in the dark.
END OF BOX
Last issue's star map showed us Cassiopeia or Sharmishtha. Now it is high in the Northern sky. Following its stars Navi-Schedar upwards takes you to Pegasus or Mahashwa, the flying horse. 
From it is the line of stars Andromeda or Devayani. Parallel to it is the little Ashwini nakshatra. Going from Ashwini towards Pegasus you will find the planet Mars or Mangala. 
In October Earth overtook Mars. It is farther now, around 10 crore kilometres away. If you watched it last month, you will find it a little less bright. If you saw it with a telescope last month and see it again now, you will see that Mars is smaller: it has moved farther away from us.
Go down from Mars towards the Southwestern horizon. As the sky darkens after sunset in the evening sky on 17th December, you will find a very thin crescent Moon and near it the planet Jupiter (Brihaspati or Guru) and the less bright Saturn (Shani), close to each other. Keep watching Jupiter and Saturn. 
As December goes on, they are going down towards the horizon as they set in the West, but every day coming closer. On 21st December they come so close to each other that they might look like a double planet, one brighter and the other fainter. This is called a {conjunction} of the two planets. It is pretty to see. What it means is that from our perspective on Earth, Jupiter 80 crore kilometres away is overtaking Saturn 140 crore kilometres away, as both go around the Sun. They may look like they form a double planet, but there are 60 crore kilometres separating them.
If you draw straight lines out of Chennai, the lines going through Delhi and Srinagar will be very close to each other. We cannot see them but we can imagine a bright Delhi in the sky with a less bright Srinagar next to it.
Such {yuti}'s, when two planets are seen in the same rashi, are a big event for astrologers. I was reading what some of them have said, that the bad effects of Shani will overpower the good effects of Guru, and this is dangerous for the world. Earlier this year some astrologers predicted a minor battle between the Chinese and US navies. Is this true?
Astronomers could have calculated ten years ago that these two planets will be in the same rashi in December 2020. Would the astrologers have made the same prediction in 2010? No, because the prediction was made after the relations between China and US worsened during this year. So the prediction is nothing but a guess made by these astrologers. If it fails, as most predictions do, people will forget about it. If it succeeds, then the astrologers will remind people that they had made such a prediction. Nothing prevents an astrologer from sitting down today, making a hundred predictions about world events for the next 10 years. Then any one can check 10 years later, how many of these predictions came true.
It is an amazing fact that 10 years ago one could have calculated where two planets would be in the sky today. This is because of methods in mathematics. Astronomers do this year after year and make these future events available to people. Ignoring the fact that Jupiter and Saturn are 60 crore kilometres from each other, astrologers relate this conjunction to properties, such as good and bad. There is nothing good or bad about a planet, it keeps travelling its path out there in space, regularly as it has been doing for lakhs of years. People keep doing good and bad things, as they have been doing always. 
What this column has tried to do from January to December 2020 is to tell you what you can see in the sky. I have watched the stars for 40 years now, and every year I see the same patterns repeat. I find it very satisfying that I can watch these beautiful patterns in the sky every year without having to connect them to anything happening on Earth. I invite you to make nightskywatching a hobby.