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Since its celestial “kiss” with Venus in June, Jupiter has been slowly sinking toward the sun as seen from Earth. Skywatchers now have just a few evenings to see the solar system’s largest planet before it slips into the sun’s glare. This Thursday and Friday, July 9 and 10, the planet will sit very low in the west-northwest about an hour after sunset. Here’s how you can see Jupiter in the evening sky for the last time until November.
Panoramic concept of Jupiter gas slowly orbiting in deep space. Some data comes from the public domain of NASA.
getty
Key Facts
Jupiter will set about 45 minutes after the sun this week. Observers will need a clear, flat western horizon and binoculars to find it, though once found it should be visible to the naked eye. It will be below and to the right of bright Venus.
Jupiter disappears from the evening sky as it moves toward conjunction with the sun as seen from Earth. This will happen on July 29th. Jupiter will then rise into the morning sky in mid-August.
Jupiter will next appear in the sky after sunset in November, when it will be visible in the east very close to Mars.
The next Venus-Jupiter conjunction will be on August 26, 2027. According to Universe todayVenus will eclipse Jupiter on November 22, 2065, the only such event of the 21st century.
How to see Jupiter before it disappears
Seeing Jupiter before it disappears won’t be easy. Jupiter will be bright, shining at about magnitude -1.6, but will set during twilight when it is low in the west-northwest sky on Thursday and Friday, July 9 and 10. Look above the west-northwest horizon about 45 minutes after sunset, preferably with any pair of binoculars. With the latter, observers can sometimes see some of Jupiter’s four major Galilean moons—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. A small telescope reveals its cloud belts and, under good conditions, the Great Red Spot, a massive storm that has been going on for nearly 200 years.
Stargazing this weekend
This weekend is a busy one for sky watchers. First comes a great look at Mars. Look low to the east-northeast an hour before sunrise on Saturday, July 11, for a 13% waning crescent near Mars and Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus, with the open Pleiades cluster nearby. Also on Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12, Manhattanhenge appears at sunset in New York, with the sun aligning with the grid of streets. Saturday sees the full alignment of the sun at 8:20 p.m. EDT, with the half sun aligning on Sunday at 8:21 p.m. EDT. On July 14, the new moon brings the darkest skies of the month, just in time for the start of the annual Perseid meteor shower on July 17. On that date, a crescent moon appears near Venus after sunset, while on July 29, the full Buck moon rises at sunset.
This image depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Background
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and the largest planet in the solar system, with a mass more than twice that of all the other planets combined. It rotates very quickly, with a day on Jupiter lasting only 10 hours, the shortest in the solar system. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, but two spacecraft are on their way to study its moons. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is traveling to the Jupiter system and is scheduled to arrive in 2030 to investigate whether Europa might have conditions suitable for life. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission will arrive in 2031 to fly by Callisto and Europa, eventually becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a non-Earth moon when it reaches Ganymede for a nine-month mission finale.
