Posted on 04/26/2015 8:16:24 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Tonight it's extra easy to locate, as the waxing gibbous moon will be parked just to the lower left of Jupiter. Even though it's nearly 475 million miles away, you can look through even a small telescope and see at least some of the cloud bands that circle the gargantuan, 88,000-mile wide planet. These cloud bands are made of sulfur, methane, and other gases. Underneath the cloud bands, Jupiter is basically a giant ball of hydrogen gas with a solid core.
With your telescope, you can also see something that Galileo Galilei saw in the 1600s, something that eventually got him in a lot of trouble. There are little "stars" that show up in a line on either side of Jupiter. These are actually Jupiter's brightest moons.
As they orbit Jupiter in periods of 2 to 17 days, they constantly change their alignment on either side of the planet. Some nights you don't see all four of the moons, because one or more of them may be either behind or in front of Jupiter, lost in the backdrop of the planet's glow.
On the diagram, you can see the alignment of Jupiter's moons from Sunday through next Friday. There's a great website, Shallow Sky (www.shallowsky.com/jupiter), that will help you keep up with Jupiter's moons from night to night. There are also phone apps that do the same. My favorite is "Jupiter's Moon," from Sky and Telescope Magazine.
(Excerpt) Read more at postbulletin.com ...
Tell Jupiter to pull his shorts back on. Nobody wants to be mooned by such an old guy as Jupiter.
And so is Saturn! Saturn’s opposition should be 22MAY2015 01:22UTC.
https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20150523_13_100
May 23 - Saturn at Opposition. The ringed planet will be at its closest approach to Earth and its face will be fully illuminated by the Sun. It will be brighter than any other time of the year and will be visible all night long. This is the best time to view and photograph Saturn and its moons. A medium-sized or larger telescope will allow you to see Saturn’s rings and a few of its brightest moons.
http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-calendar-current.html
Cool!
I can see the moons of Jupiter just with binoculars, but the cloud bands are much more difficult. A small telescope won’t be able to see them, or surface detail on any of the planets.
/johnny
Well, at least Uranus isn’t the one mooning us.
My first semester in college, I took an introductory astronomy course. I’ll never forget the night we got to go up into the observatory and look through the telescope at Saturn. Just blew my mind to be able to see something so far away, rings and all.
Thanks for posting!
At least its not Uranis! (first?)
Reagan was so old, he saw Saturn before it got engaged.
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