The moon and Jupiter are your reward for staying up late tonight. In North America look for Jupiter, the largest planet of the solar system, to be about seven to eight degrees away from the waning gibbous moon this evening. Eight degrees on the sky’s dome is roughly the width of four fingers held at an arm’s length. European, African and Asian sky watchers will see Jupiter even closer to the moon.
The moon and Jupiter will rise in the east before midnight and stay in the southern skies until dawn. For the southern hemisphere, they will be visible in the northern sky. Jupiter and the moon are the brightest objects in the sky at this time. They will stay in view throughout the morning hours.
Photo: Crescent Moon and Jupiter Credit: Piconb’s Photostream
Credit: Piconb/ flickr
Close to Jupiter you might notice the small grouping of stars called the Pleiades. The Pleiades, also called the Seven Sisters, are included in the constellation Taurus. Pleiades is a cluster of over 3000 stars about 400 light years away. We can generally see six stars with our naked eye.
While Jupiter and the moon appear to be close together in the sky, they are actually over 390,674,709 miles (628,730,000 km) apart. That’s a lot of numbers. To make things simpler, distances in the solar system are commonly stated in astronomical units or AU. One astronomical unit is the average distance from the sun to Earth, so 1 AU equals 92,955,807.267 miles (149,597,870.691 km). Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is 0.38 AU from the sun; Earth is 1 AU; Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is 1.52 AU; Jupiter is 5.2 AU; and Neptune, the eighth planet, is 30.06 AU from the sun.
September 2011 guide to the five visible planets
Stay up late tonight and you will get to see our largest planet Jupiter and the waning gibbous moon close together in our lovely night sky.
