By John Hlynialuk
Telescopic appearance of Jupiter, with Red Spot near centre. NASA photo
As the summer viewing season for Saturn is winding down, another gas giant is returning to the evening sky to delight planet watchers. You can’t miss the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, rising in the east around midnight local time. With Venus too close to the Sun to view safely, Jupiter takes over third spot as the brightest celestial body after the Sun and the Moon.
Jupiter has fascinated skywatchers for hundreds of years. Although the ancients noticed Venus as brighter than Jupiter when both were in the sky, Jupiter is often visible all night and was given the preeminent position in Roman mythology as the King of the Gods and, similarly, as Zeus in Greek mythology. Its prominence in the sky is due to its size as the largest planet.
Views of Jupiter through binoculars always show a changing arrangement of four moons (three of them are larger than our own), first observed by Galileo in 1610. His telescope showed them clearly as separate bodies revolving around Jupiter, as if the planet and its moons formed a miniature solar system.
Modern telescopes also show details of the cloud bands (two prominent dark streaks above and below Jupiter’s equator) and, with larger instruments, the Great Red Spot, an Earth-sized atmospheric storm. The Great Red Spot has been visible in the Jovian cloud decks since telescopes were capable of seeing it, probably about 1665 by Giovanni Cassini and Robert Hooke.
In any case, the “King is back. All hail the King!”
John Hlynialuk is an amateur astronomer based in Owen Sound, Ontario. |
