Jupiter tonight

Tonight in London

How to find it

Jupiter is a bright white point, brighter than any star (up to magnitude −2.9). Since it orbits the Sun in 12 years, it moves on by about one zodiac constellation a year and is best seen in a different season each year. Opposition comes every 13 months: Jupiter then rises at sunset and shines all night.

The nearest bright signpost now is Regulus: Jupiter is 10° from it, a few binocular fields away. Light takes 49 minutes to reach the Earth from the planet now.

When it shows over the next 12 months

Jupiter is in the evening sky 4 Feb – 5 Jul, and in the morning sky 5 Oct – 1 Mar, 22 Sep – 4 Oct. Brightest on 10 Feb (−2.6), closest to the Earth on 10 Feb, 652 million km.

Month by month

On the 15th of each month: when the planet rises and sets, its brightness, constellation and distance from the Earth.

Key dates

The outer planets are best at opposition, when the Earth is between them and the Sun, and hidden for a few weeks around conjunction with the Sun.

The Galilean moons on the coming nights

How the four large moons line up each evening at 22:00, as binoculars or a telescope without a star diagonal show them. Distances are in Jupiter radii; a hollow dot is a moon behind or in front of the planet.

The Moon next to the planet

Every month the Moon passes Jupiter, the easiest way to find the planet. The next close passes:

Where the planet is in the Solar System

The view from above: the Sun in the centre, orbits scaled down. Today Jupiter is 877 million km from the Earth; over the year the distance ranges from 652 million km to 959 million km.

What kind of planet

Jupiter is a gas giant heavier than all the other planets put together; more than a thousand Earths would fit inside it. It has no solid surface: its hydrogen and helium atmosphere turns to liquid deeper down. A storm larger than the Earth, the Great Red Spot, has turned in its cloud belts for centuries, though it has been shrinking in recent decades. Jupiter spins in under 10 hours, the fastest of any planet, which makes it visibly bulge at the equator. It has faint rings and more than 90 moons.

In binoculars

Jupiter is the best first target for binoculars. Brace them against a wall or put them on a tripod and you will see up to four tiny points in a line beside the planet: the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They line up differently every evening, and Io moves noticeably in a few hours; now and then a moon hides behind the planet or in its shadow.

In a telescope

A small telescope (from 50–80×) shows two dark cloud belts and the moons as bright points. A 100–150 mm telescope in steady air shows more belts, the Great Red Spot and the moons' shadows, black dots sliding across the disc. Because Jupiter spins so fast, you can see nearly all of it in one evening.

Exploration

Pioneer 10 was the first to fly past Jupiter in 1973, followed in 1979 by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which found its rings and the volcanoes of Io. Galileo orbited from 1995 to 2003 and dropped a probe into the atmosphere. Juno has studied Jupiter since 2016, and Europe's JUICE (launched 2023) and NASA's Europa Clipper (launched 2024) are on their way to its icy moons, to find out whether the oceans under the ice of Europa and Ganymede could suit life.

Name and history

The planet is named after Jupiter, the chief Roman god (the Greek Zeus). In January 1610 Galileo saw four of its moons through his telescope: the first proof that not everything in the sky goes around the Earth. In 1994 the whole world watched fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 slam into Jupiter one after another, leaving dark scars larger than the Earth.

Facts

Other planets