Welcome to the second of Fun Science‘s CosWatch blog posts, which you can read through with your young scientist and learn how to see Jupiter.

What is CosWatch?

There’s so much to see in the night sky! You may have seen Brian Cox on TV describing the “wonders of the universe”, or Carl Sagan talking about the “awesome machinery of nature”, and they’re absolutely right. But while huge rockets and observatories can help, space isn’t just for people with expensive equipment. You can see amazing things from millions of miles away from your very own back garden. Each week, I’m going to talk about one of these incredible objects, and how you can find them.

This time, we’re going to be talking about how to see Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system!

Tell me about Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun, and takes just under twelve years to go around it. It is a gas giant; unlike our planet, which has a solid surface and a relatively small atmosphere, Jupiter is almost nothing else but atmosphere. Like all the gas giants, it has rings, though unlike Saturn’s, they’re very faint.

Jupiter is a powerful planet; it is the third-brightest thing in the night sky after the Moon and Venus, and, despite being so large, it is the fastest-spinning planet, with its days only ten hours long. It also has a huge magnetic field, fifteen times bigger than the Sun’s! You may have heard of the great red spot, which is a storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere that has been raging for four centuries, and is very slowly diminishing. You could fit three Earths inside it, such is its size. There are many, many moons of Jupiter. The human race has confirmed at least 79, but there could be quite a few more. The most famous are the four “Galilean” moons: Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io. These are much larger than Earth’s moon, and are named after the Astronomer who first spotted them, Galileo Galilei. They have many interesting qualities; Io is teeming with volcanoes because its surface is torn apart by the gravity of the other planets, while Europa may hold life in its Icy oceans, twice the volume of Earth’s!

The Jupiter mystery

When scientists look at planets that go around stars that aren’t our sun, the largest gas giants – that is to say, the ones like Jupiter – tend to orbit very close to their star. They aren’t quite sure, then, why Jupiter orbits from so far away, past four solid planets. They think a young Jupiter may have collided with several other early planets, then been catapulted back to where it is now – this theory is called the “Grand Tack”.

How can I see Jupiter?

As I mentioned, Jupiter is at times the third brightest object in the night sky. This means that, like the ISS, it can be observed with the naked eye, and indeed it has been; people as far back as the Ancient Egyptians tracked its movements across the sky. However, unlike the ISS, which is simply too fast to catch with most equipment, you can see Jupiter with any telescope or pair of binoculars if you’d like to. You don’t necessarily need any special filters or lenses, and you may be able to see the Galilean moons in your device!

You can try to memorise the movements of all the planets, but given that this is quite complicated, I like to use the National Schools’ Observatory, which provides a daily forecast for the UK sky at night. To see Jupiter at the moment you’d need to be up at 2-6am – but there are plenty of times in the year where it is visible much earlier, so don’t be disheartened!

In conclusion:

• Jupiter is the powerful fifth planet from the Sun, with a huge magnetic field and a fast spin.
• A gas giant, very little of Jupiter is solid, instead mostly being liquid and gas.
• Jupiter has at least seventy-nine moons, of which four are very famous. One of these may hold life!
• Jupiter is in an unusual place for a planet of its size, and scientists still aren’t certain why.
• You can see it with the naked eye, but get an extra-special view through equipment.

What’s next on CosWatch?

Next time, I’ll be talking about Orion’s Belt. See you soon!

Notes:

Fun Science recently created a “Planets and Space” home kit, pre-orderable now for only £5.00. Check it out here! Younger scientists, or older ones with good taste, may want to check out The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System in Joanna Cole’s Magic School Bus series to help them remember and learn about the different planets – though note that this book has Pluto classified as a planet, which is of course out of date..