Where is Jupiter tonight?

How to recognize Jupiter with the naked eye

Jupiter is hard to miss. NASA’s Night Sky Network notes that only the Moon, Venus and occasionally Mars outshine it, and that it stays bright even when it is at its farthest from Earth. It appears as a steady, brilliant white or cream-colored point on the ecliptic, the band of zodiac constellations where the planets travel.

If you see a very bright “star” high in the sky at a time when Venus can’t be up, such as late at night, it is almost certainly Jupiter. NASA’s skywatching FAQ adds a useful comparison: Jupiter at its brightest is nearly as bright as Venus at its faintest. Unlike Venus, Jupiter can be seen high overhead in a fully dark sky, not just in twilight.

What binoculars and a small telescope show

Jupiter is the best planet for beginners with optics. Its four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are called the Galilean moons after Galileo, who saw them in 1610. NASA’s Night Sky Network says binoculars usually reveal at least one or two of them as tiny star-like points beside the planet, and that they lie nearly in a line, which makes them the easiest planetary moons to see. Brace the binoculars against a fence post or car roof, or use a tripod, to keep them steady.

A small telescope shows all four moons when none is hidden, along with Jupiter’s darker cloud belts, according to NASA. NASA adds that a telescope with enough power can show the Great Red Spot, a giant storm, and the shadows of the moons crossing the disk. The moons shift position over a single evening, so a sketch made over a few hours shows their motion.

Jupiter’s disk is the largest of any planet in a telescope except for Venus near its closest approach. NASA’s fact sheet gives an apparent size of 30.5 to 50.1 arcseconds, big enough to show detail at modest magnifications.

Why its visibility comes and goes

Jupiter takes about 12 years to orbit the Sun, so Earth laps it a little more than once a year. NASA’s fact sheet gives a synodic period, the time from one opposition to the next, of 399 days. Each opposition therefore comes about a month later than the one before.

At opposition, NASA explains, Earth is between Jupiter and the Sun. The planet rises at sunset, is up all night and is biggest and brightest for the year. In the months after opposition, Jupiter is an evening object that sets earlier each night. It then passes behind the Sun at conjunction and vanishes for several weeks, before reappearing in the morning sky before dawn and gradually returning to opposition.

Because it moves only about one zodiac constellation a year, Jupiter stays in roughly the same part of the sky for months at a time. The table above lists the constellation for each month.

Tips for seeing Jupiter

• Wait for it to climb. Jupiter looks sharpest high in the sky, where you are looking through less turbulent air.
• Start with low power. In a telescope, use your lowest magnification first to see the planet and all its moons in one field, then increase it to study the belts.
• Look for moon events. A moon or its shadow crossing Jupiter’s face is a common sight in a small telescope. Astronomy apps and almanacs list these events.
• Compare nights. Note where the moons sit on one night and check again the next.

Our planets page shows which planets are up tonight, and the guide to finding planets explains how to tell planets from stars.