"Jupiter, again, is the bright spot, Saturn is very faint on its right, about 2 mm away"
Actually, yours is the best I've seen, and I've seen about 4 or 5 posted by DU members -- they were all with substantial magnification, so though cool, I was wondering what it looked like to the naked eye, particularly the distance between Jupiter and Saturn as viewed by the naked eye, and your photo shows that.
Also shows how dim Saturn appears that low on the horizon to the naked eye... sure, it would be a little brighter with a little more sky darkness, but not much.
I finally saw it on the 24th, 3 days after the Grand Conjunction (my first chance in more than 2 weeks because of cloudiness), and I'd say it was about 2/3 of a moon's width distance between Jupiter and Saturn. And by moon's width, I'm thinking of the width of the moon when it's high in the sky, not its width at near the horizon when it's as big as a barn.
I asked Google how close the two were as compared to the width of a full moon, and it said
"On the evening of Dec. 21, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together than in centuries, only a tenth of a degree apart, or one-fifth the width of the full moon."
I saw other search results that said 1/3 and 1/4 the width of the moon. Anyway, now I know.
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