Jupiter Sky Show Ends April 22, With Planet 'Returning' In June

By: Joe Rao
Published: 04/20/2012 06:22 PM EDT on SPACE.com

Jupiter will end its brilliant year-long show on Sunday evening (April 22) by making a rendezvous with an exceedingly thin and very young crescent moon. 

Indeed, the moon itself will appear so thin and low that it may be rather hard to detect in the sun’s afterglow. Jupiter will be even lower, appearing to sit about 3 degrees directly below the slender lunar sliver. (Your closed fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10 degrees across.)

The moon will be just 36 hours past its new phase, and will thus be just 2 percent illuminated. The moon and Jupiter will be setting about 1 1/2 hours after sunset on Sunday. The Jupiter sky map associated with this guide shows where to look Sunday to see the planet after sunset.  

To enhance your chances of getting a good look at both the moon and the planet, make sure that your prospective viewing site has a very clear and unobstructed view toward the west-northwest part of the sky. 

Thirty minutes after sunset, the moon will be no higher than 10 degrees above the horizon. And Jupiter, which will be nothing more than a bright, white dot against the twilight background, will lurk nearby, appearing just 3 degrees lower.

You can accentuate your chances of picking up both heavenly bodies by scanning around that part of the sky with a decent pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Once you sight them, getting a glimpse of the pair with your unaided eyes should be a bit easier.

After Sunday, you can pretty much say goodbye to Jupiter as an evening object, as it will be swallowed up by the sunset glow. The planet will be in conjunction with the sun on May 13 and will not reappear again until sometime in early June, when it will transition to the early morning sky. 

However, the giant planet is destined to put on a nice showing in the predawn sky during early summer, being nicely positioned near the bright orange star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus (The Bull). And by then Venus will also have moved into the morning sky and will be nearby, making for an attractive celestial scene.

So for Jupiter, this is not goodbye but rather, "till we meet again this summer."

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

• Skywatcher Photos: Venus and Jupiter Come Together in March 2012
• Best Beginner Astrophotography Telescopes
• Planets Venus and Jupiter Own the Night (Infographic)

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Comments

[Charles Elk]

08:00 AM on 04/24/2012

Over the St. Paddy's Day weekend Venus and Jupiter were absolutely stunning next to each other in the night sky. Combined with the unusually warm weather and the nice bonfire my friends and I shared it will be an event that I will remember for a long time.

[Don Clanton]

12:58 PM on 04/23/2012

This entire season has been spectacular. Even with cityhaze it's been an awesome show.

[dhutch457]

02:56 AM on 04/23/2012

I've been watching what I thought was a very bright star in the sky for several weeks along with a slightly smaller, less intense star near by and both of these were near the moon. I had meant to call our local planetarium to ask about this but I kept forgetting. Glad to see that it was clarified that the larger "star" was actually Jupiter. Still trying to figure out what the smaller "star" is that is nearby since it wasn't mentioned in the article. Anyone know?

[mullermugs32]

05:06 AM on 04/23/2012

Venus

[Charles Elk]

08:02 AM on 04/24/2012

Venus actually would have been the larger body and Jupiter would have been the smaller one.

[dhutch457]

10:23 AM on 04/24/2012

Thank you Mullermugs and Charles Elk for the information. I guess it would make sense that Venus was the larger of the "stars" since we're only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from that planet.

[Edwin Keever Jr]

11:06 PM on 04/22/2012

Bones! We need to save Jupiter! Jim! I'm just an old country doctor not a damn astrominar!

[broadcastair]

07:58 PM on 04/22/2012

Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar system, is about 500,000,000 miles from Earth. It's so large that about 1,000 earth-sized planets could fit inside of it. Do the math: 1.3(Πr³) yields a sphere's volume. Or don't do it. I don't give a damn. Just take my word for it. Anyway, Jupiter has no known "surface," as such; it's a huge, monster-sized ball of gas, mostly hydrogen, and it gets so dense near its core that the hydrogen is compressed into a semi-metallic state. In fact, I once saw this one astronomer-dude who said that he was certain that the Jovian magnetic field was the largest single object in the solar system. The amount of radiation that sucker puts out is intense. It's very unlikely that humans will ever get very close to it.

[marvineh2001]

07:57 PM on 04/22/2012

Nostradamus when he predicted these events after becoming an Alchemist in France a brilliant scientist that God used to transport through time like Stoney Stevenson in Kurt Vonnegut movies. These people were placed on the Earth at critical times to tell us and warn us from God and they were often ridiculed and had to even write in quatrains about these futuristic coming events that would shape our world as we know it now. We are about to experience all that God has for us he cannot wait and the hour approaches as the four horsemen are mounting up and soon all the planets Dark Rift will align so much energy for one person only, me.

[PirateJohn]

08:05 PM on 04/22/2012

Hold on, everybody. I think it might be trying to communicate...

[NightShayde]

11:29 PM on 04/22/2012

It should try harder. Making no sense to me.

[KellyMBray]

01:18 AM on 04/23/2012

Stay out of your moms meds.

[antipodal2u]

04:40 PM on 04/22/2012

'Facinating jim'

[as85382]

06:03 PM on 04/22/2012

lol

[David Pawson]

04:37 PM on 04/22/2012

WOW! Had me worried there that the planet was about to disappear or something! "Last Chance to See Jupiter" indeed! Someone really needs practice writing sensible teasers.

[flxdcatbruce]

07:05 PM on 04/22/2012

Scared me too...I thought they had talked to my doctor!

[LacenRoses8]

08:03 PM on 04/22/2012

Yeah, I thought we were all gona die !!

[Mark Boileau]

09:20 PM on 04/22/2012

Pssst...we are all gonna die....sometime...lol

[Warren W Ward]

02:49 PM on 04/22/2012

It's also our last chance to see Jupiter before the astronomers declare it not a planet.

[wclark3350]

04:37 PM on 04/22/2012

According to Wall Street, Jupiter is too big to fail.

[wwhatever747]

06:58 PM on 04/22/2012

Re: Titatic was too big to sink?

[Norm dePlume]

05:24 PM on 04/24/2012

It's true! It's true!
Jupiter actually emits about twice the energy of the sunlight that falls on it. That might qualify it as a brown dwarf star, "not a planet".
And since the Moon actually co-orbits the Sun with the Earth, rather than orbiting the Earth alone, neither qualifies as a Planet under the new rules. (At inferior conjunction, the Sun's gravity is stronger than the Earth's, so the Moon actually moves toward the Sun then. The Earth moves faster toward the Moon, so it recaptures the Moon for the next orbit. See article by Asimov.)
So that's only six "real" planets, out of some two dozen large bodies in Solar orbit. Feh.

[CrazyJon85]

02:34 PM on 04/22/2012

that photo at the top of the article is from Boulder, Co isnt it?

[Autora]

03:35 PM on 04/22/2012

Did you recognize a mountain range? I would know a certain set of Catskill hills in NYS in a heart beat.

Just curious, but apropos the article I was thinking I wished I lived in Montana or someplace like it, to see this conjunction. I am sure I can't from my present abode.

Good for you, though, if you knew what that picture was of: funny how things stick in the mind, no? There are a set of low mountains in the Catskills in NY that I haven't lived in for over 15 years-- but they are unmistakable to me.

[sal7probon]

01:42 AM on 04/23/2012

Hey, CrazyJon85, I live a few miles from Boulder just outside of Denver. I have enjoyed the show for the last 5 weeks or so. Amazing, it is! We are the "mile high" city so we get to see a bit better than the rest of the folks. That picture at the top of the page could be thousands of back yards or front porches. This is beautiful country. Just think of it as "some where" on earth.

[TheStreak]

02:16 PM on 04/22/2012

What can I say? I've enjoyed the show.

[OC4Obama4Pres]

08:45 PM on 04/22/2012

I'm with ya there.

[PutYourNameOnIt]

01:04 PM on 04/22/2012

Good typo in the headline Huff Poo.