Two To Tango: Jupiter Meets Up With Moon For Night Sky Dance

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

North Americans on the evening of January 21, 2013 will have a spectacular opportunity to catch a rendezvous between the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, and our own natural satellite, the Moon. Depending on your location, you will have the chance to catch this evening dance anywhere from 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

Those in the Pacific time zone can catch the meeting at around 7 p.m.; the rendezvous occurs at 8:30 p.m. in Mountain, 10 p.m. in Central, and 11:30 p.m. in the Eastern time zone. During the dance, Jupiter will appear about a finger-width from the Moon. While they appear to be side-by-side, this is in fact not the case. The moon is a mere 250,000 miles from Earth and Jupiter is 1,700 times farther away in the background (about 425,000,000 miles away).

The moonlight dance can easily be seen with the naked eye, but will be much more visible with binoculars or a small, wide-field telescope at a magnification of 40× or lower.

For those with telescopes, additional treats may be at hand. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot will be visible from 9:00 to 10:40 p.m. EST, and its moon Europa will cross in front of the planet between 8:13 p.m. and 10:37 p.m. EST. The Jovian moon will be well camouflaged against its mother planet’s bright disk, but spotting it may be easier if one searches for the faint black shadow that will cross the face of Jupiter between 10:22 p.m. and 12:46 p.m. EST.

Sky & Telescope magazine’s associate editor, Tony Flanders, said not only will astronomers get to witness an evening rendezvous between the gas giant and the moon, but will “also get an opportunity to attempt an unusual feat: spotting Jupiter in the late afternoon, before the Sun sets.”

“First locate the Moon medium-high in the east; then look a few Moon-widths left or lower left of the Moon for Jupiter. It should be easy to spot with binoculars if the air is clear,” said Flanders in a statement on the magazine’s website.

Alan MacRobert, senior editor of Sky & Telescope, said the bright orange star Aldebaran will also make an appearance during the Jupiter/moon tango, shining brightly to the lower left.

“Binoculars show that the entire event takes place on the outskirts of the Hyades, the closest true star cluster to Earth,” said MacRobert. “The lovely Pleiades cluster lies nearby.”

If you are unable to get outside to see the evening rendezvous this Monday, January 21, do not despair; another chance meeting between the two celestial objects will occur again on March 17^th for a St. Patty’s Day Jig.

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