On Friday and Saturday, you can even capture the Great Red Spot, the giant storm raging in the southern equatorial belt, with binoculars, but if you don’t have professional binoculars or the clouds don’t allow you to see it, don’t do it. Don’t despair: The stunningly bright planet can still be observed for a long time — even as a moon, too.
Teacher Chaba Abraham, an amateur astronomer, one of the main members of the Astronomy Circle of the Andromeda Society, told our portal about this phenomenon.
Jupiter opposes itself, that is, opposite the sun, every 13 years. It revolves around the sun in these many Earth years. More precisely, less than 12 years, the extra year is considered a correction due to the Earth’s orbit. This is when it is closest to Earth. Therefore, it appears brighter and larger in diameter. – It was physically closest on Friday, November 3, but given its distance of more than 700 million kilometers, it will be extremely bright and barely noticeable for weeks.
We met Csaba Ábrahám in Debrecen, where he was able to film under less cloudy skies, where Jupiter can be clearly seen even despite the light pollution in the city centre.
The good news for sky lovers is that this amazing brightness will continue until at least Christmas. Jupiter will be visible until the end of January at its peak, in all its glory. After that, they will die down earlier and earlier, until they finally disappear into the sunlight at the beginning of April.
Jupiter is absolutely stunning to the naked eye these days, but even if you point a small portable telescope at it, four bright spots appear around it: These are its four largest moons, the Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. . They are so bright that if the planet did not shine so brightly, they could be seen with the naked eye. However, it is possible that we do not see them all at the same time, in which case one of them is located directly in front or behind it. In fact, its moons are so bright that if it were not for the glow of the planet next to them, we would have seen them with the naked eye.
Using a telescope capable of 50-100 times magnification, we can actually observe cloud bands and typical storms.
