Demanding Jupiter

For the rest of August and into much of September, bright Jupiter demands our attention in the southeast just after sunset. By midnight the mighty planet moves low in the south. By 3 a.m. it begins to set in the southwest.

Extend your left arm, spread your left hand, and place your little finger over Jupiter. Your hand covers the "teapot" asterism of the constellation Sagittarius. Look closely, the group of stars really do resemble a teapot! This is a great area of the sky to scan with binoculars, revealing many fuzzy features. You are really seeing star forming nebulae, giant clusters of stars, and dark lanes amid star fields. You are gazing toward the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, some 26,000 light years distant. The star fields you see aren't nearly that far — only 6000 light years away! More distant objects are blocked by interstellar galactic gas and dust.

Look again at the solar system's largest planet — 10 times the diameter of our Earth — this time with binoculars. If your focus is sharp and your hands are steady, you can discern a small round disk with 1, 2, 3, or 4 "stars" in a row close to the planet. Those aren't stars but Jupiter's four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Io and Europa will be the most difficult to spot since they always appear very close to the planet, but a small telescope can pick them out quite easily.

Jupiter currently is the brightest object, other than the Moon, in our night sky. Later this year, Venus plays a bigger, i.e., brighter, role. Now, however, Venus sets just after the sun and is difficult to spot above the mountain ridges.

Such is our view from Earth ...