I now see Jupiter all the time when walking at night. As I turned the corner facing east, yellow Jupiter shone straight ahead. It is so bright that it looks bigger than all the stars. In our local cosmic environment, this is the largest object in existence. If you could hollow out the planet like a Halloween pumpkin, it would take more than 1,300 Earths to fill it. Although it is currently 377 million miles (606 million km) from Earth, Jupiter’s enormous size and persistent cloud cover make it extremely bright.
Jupiter (center) is the fifth planet from the sun and the largest with a diameter of about 88,000 miles (141,600 km). This planet consists mostly of hydrogen and helium like the sun.
Contribute / NASA
Jupiter travels through the zodiac constellations just like any other planet. Currently in Aries the ram, a small group is shaped like a fishing rod. Jupiter is the outermost planet, meaning its orbit is farther from the sun than Earth. There are five known outer planets – can you name them? The farther a planet orbits from the sun, the slower its movement in the sky from year to year. Since there are 12 zodiac constellations and Jupiter completes its orbit every 12 years, Jupiter spends about one year in each constellation.
Jupiter shines near the minor constellation Aries this month. Moving at an average speed of more than 29,000 miles per hour (47,000 km/h), the planet takes about 12 years to orbit the sun. Next year on this date Jupiter will be in Taurus. Since Taurus is located to the east of Aries, this planet will rise almost two hours later.
Contributed / Stellarium with additions by Bob King
When you face Jupiter on your next clear night, take a moment to identify the Aries directly above it. One year from now at the same time and place, the gas giant will abandon the ram and shine from the horns of Taurus the bull, the next constellation to the east. All the outer planets move east through the sky as they orbit the sun. If we fly to Venus and look back at Earth – an outer planet from Venus’s point of view – it will also travel eastward through the zodiac.
It’s hard to know how far away Jupiter really is, but let’s try. If you shot a laser beam traveling at the speed of light at the moon, it would take about 1.3 seconds to arrive. Aimed at Jupiter, it took 34 minutes to complete the journey! Being far from the sun, Jupiter is a very cold place. Well, at least the clouds are like that. That’s all we ever see on this planet — clouds. There are no solid surfaces. The cloud layer descends for about 30 miles (50 km) before the atmosphere transitions to hydrogen and helium and then to liquid versions of these gases as density and pressure increase.
If Jupiter’s atmospheric pressure were equal to sea level pressure on Earth, then the temperature would be 166 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-110 degrees C). As with Earth, temperatures will increase the deeper they go due to the enormous pressure from the atmosphere above as well as residual heat from the planet’s ongoing and slow gravitational collapse since its birth more than 4.5 billion years ago. Don’t worry. Jupiter is in no danger of becoming a black hole. All that heat and pressure pushes back and keeps the planet in relative balance. It also lacks the mass to destroy itself.
Jupiter (right) and the Pleiades star cluster seen through a hole in the clouds earlier this season.
Contribute / Bob King
Jupiter shows a beautiful ribbon appearance through a small telescope. These bands, called zones and belts, are clouds made of ammonia ice crystals mixed with water ice. Ammonia-rich air rising from the planet’s hot interior expands and cools, condensing into thick white clouds that create these zones. The sinking air heats and evaporates the ammonia ice giving rise to darker reddish brown clouds at lower altitudes. This is the belt. Even a small scope will show two parallel dark lines called the North and South Equatorial Belts, which are the broadest and darkest of the two. The alternating east-west jet stream at the transition between the belt and zone – traveling at about 225 miles per hour (360 km/h) – shapes the clouds into horizontal bands.
This is a portrait of Jupiter made on October 5th. We see the prominent Northern and Southern Equatorial Belts (visible even with a 2.4 inch telescope), the Great Red Spot and several storm ovals.
Contribute / Christopher Go
Clouds are a characteristic of weather that change shape and color. With so much weather happening on Jupiter, the planet’s appearance changes from year to year (or faster). You never know what to expect. Sometimes the belt will disappear and return the following year or the color of the Great Red Spot will change from peach to brick red. The new storm summons a billowing oval, rolling like a ball bearing around the planet for a few seasons and then dissipating or merging with other clouds. Only the Great Red Spot, a giant red oval about 1.3 times the diameter of Earth, remains. No one knows for sure how long it has existed but it may have been observed as early as the 1660s.
Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets, which is about 10 hours. Breakfast at 8am and dinner at 6pm will include a full round of Jovian. The fifth planet is also rich with 95 known moons. Four of them are bright enough to see through binoculars or a small telescope. Early next month when Jupiter is at its closest point to Earth, I will post a special feature about the moons and how to spot them.
2023-10-21 21:27:09
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