Jupiter is our solar system’s undisputed king of the planets! Jupiter is bright and easy to spot from Earth, helped by its massive size and reflective cloud tops. Jupiter even possesses moons the size of planets: Ganymede, its largest, is bigger than the planet Mercury. What’s more, you can easily observe Jupiter and its moons with a modest instrument, just like Galileo did over 400 years ago.
NASA’s Juno mission captured this look at the southern hemisphere of Jupiter on Feb. 17, 2020. This high-resolution view is a composite of four images captured by the JunoCam imager and assembled by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill.
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS | Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
Jupiter’s position as our solar system’s largest planet is truly earned; you could fit 11 Earths along Jupiter’s diameter, and in case you were looking to fill up Jupiter with some Earth-size marbles, you would need over 1300 Earths to fill it! However, despite its size, Jupiter’s true rule over the outer solar system comes from its enormous mass. If you took all the planets in our solar system and put them together, they would still only be half as massive as Jupiter. Jupiter’s mass has shaped the orbits of comets and asteroids. Its gravity can fling these objects away or draw them in into itself.
Jupiter is easy to observe at night with our unaided eyes. It can be one of the brightest objects in our nighttime skies, bested only by the Moon, Venus, and occasionally Mars. That’s impressive for a planet that is still over 365 million miles (587 million km) away. While the King of Planets has 95 known moons, only the four large moons that Galileo originally observed in 1610—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto—can be easily observed with modest equipment. Most binoculars will show at least one or two, and small telescopes will show more details like Jupiter’s cloud bands.
NASA’s Juno mission is one of just nine spacecraft to have visited this impressive world. Juno entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016 to begin its initial mission to study this giant world’s mysterious interior. Juno’s mission has since been extended to include the study of its large moons, and since 2021 the plucky probe, increasingly battered by Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts, has made close flybys of the icy moons Ganymede and Europa, along with volcanic Io.
Find the latest discoveries from NASA’s missions to Jupiter at science.nasa.gov/jupiter/
Look for Jupiter near the Eye of the Bull, Aldebaran, in the Taurus constellation on December 15, 2024. Binoculars may help you spot Jupiter’s moons on either side of the planet. Credit: Stellarium Web
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USU Extension Program Helps Residents
Explore Utah’s Night Skies
by Dennis Hinkamp |
For several months, social media has been filled with photos of colorful aurora flashes and comet tails. The varying quality of photos demonstrates the difficulty of finding ideal dark areas for astrophotography. Utah State University Extension offers a tool that can help find these dark areas.
According to Lisa Stoner, coordinator for the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range Dark Sky Cooperatives, Utah is well-known for its exceptional dark sky viewing conditions due to the large percentage of undeveloped public land and dry climate. In fact, Utah has more accredited dark sky places than any other state in the country. The Dark Sky Passport, developed by USU Extension’s Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, can help find them.
“The Dark Sky Passport was designed to connect youth and their families to the cosmos through outdoor experiences at night,” Stoner said. “It provides a fun way to learn about the night sky and nocturnal environments through a series of activities, personal reflections, and stickers. These include passport stamps that can be placed on the pages dedicated to recording the passport holder’s experience with each dark sky place they visit.”
Stoner said the passport introduces the Bortle Scale, a tool for quantifying the darkness of the skies. Viewers can quickly see that the quality of a night sky varies depending on the amount of artificial light and its effect on the number of stars visible. The passport also includes a map showing Utah’s International Dark Sky Places.
“These are parks, communities, and sanctuaries recognized for their commitment to the protection and education around naturally dark night skies,” she said. “The commitment to protect the night from artificial light is a win-win for rural communities that want to maintain their historic appeal and also provide a healthier environment and world-class astrophotography opportunities – a perfect example of sustainable recreation and tourism.”
Because of these qualities, the Utah Office of Tourism (UOT) Destination Development Division also saw value in the Dark Sky Passport. The UOT provided the institute additional funds through a grant to cover printing costs for another 30,000 passports as a way to encourage travel itineraries that include dark-sky places.
“We are currently looking for partners with whom we can expand the program by building an educational curriculum around the Dark Sky Passport,” said Stoner.
The Dark Sky Passport webpage has a link to a digital version of the Utah Dark Sky Passport booklet.
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