A reminder that this evening will see the close approach of Venus and Jupiter. Watching over the last week we have seen these two bright planets growing ever closer in the evening sky.
The closest approach will be about 0.3° tonight, June 30th at 16:14HST. They will be slightly further apart several hours later at sunset.
This is the best opportunity to see the pair at their closest for observer in Hawaiʻi. If you want to see the closest approach you can also try to observe the conjunction in the late afternoon sky. Both planets are bright enough to see in the daytime.
After this the pair will separate slowly and disappear into the sunset glow together.
At their closest the two will be easily close enough to bee seen together in the low power view of amateur telescopes. It makes a fascinating sight to see the two planets together in the eyepiece.
The dance of Jupiter and Venus continues in the evening sky. Over the next few days we will see the pair drawing closer. Currently an obvious pairing in the sky after sunset, the two are just 4.5° apart today. With Venus shining at -4.4 and Jupiter somewhat dimmer at magnitude -1.8 it is hard to miss the pair.
The closest approach will be about 0.3° on June 30th at 16:14HST. Thus the evening of June 30th will see the pair at their closest for observer in Hawaiʻi. If you want to see the closest approach you can also try to observe the conjunction in the late afternoon sky. Both planets are bright enough to see in the daytime.
After this the pair will separate slowly and disappear into the sunset glow together.
At their closest the two will be easily close enough to bee seen together in the low power view of amateur telescopes. It makes a fascinating sight to see the two planets together in the eyepiece.
Over the next two months the two brightest visual planets will dance in the sunset. Jupiter and Venus make for a brilliant pairing. With Venus shining at -4.3 and Jupiter somewhat dimmer at magnitude -1.9, the two are already quite obvious in the evening sky. Jupiter will swing just north of Venus approaching to within 0.3° on June 30th. The pair will separate slowly after that and disappear into the sunset glow together.
Around June 30th the two will be easily close enough to bee seen together in the low power view of amateur telescopes. It makes a fascinating sight to see the two planets together in the eyepiece.
As an added bonus the planet Mercury will join the pair around August 3rd, the trio forming a nice triangle of bright planets low in the sunset.
Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, followed by Jupiter rising about 22:19HST. The Moon will be about 78% illuminated and about 9° from the bright planet. Tomorrow night the Moon will have moved to the other side of Jupiter and be a bit closer, about 7° separation.
Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, followed by Jupiter a few minutes after midnight. The Moon will be about 59% illuminated and about 12° from the bright planet. Tomorrow night the Moon will have moved to the other side of Jupiter and be much closer, about 5° separation.
Tomorrow morning the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, followed by Jupiter at 01:34 to be almost 65° above the eastern horizon at sunrise. The Moon will be about 32% illuminated and about 6° above a bright Jupiter. The next day the Moon will have moved to the other side of Jupiter and be a bit further apart, about 10° separation.
Tomorrow morning the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, followed by Jupiter at 03:06 to be almost 40° above the eastern horizon at sunrise. The Moon will be about 18% illuminated and about 8° above a bright Jupiter. The next day the Moon will have moved to the other side of Jupiter but will be even closer, about 7° separation.
Back in April and May we saw Venus pass Uranus and Neptune making for badly mismatched conjunctions. This week it will be Jupiter, the only planet able to shine brightly enough to make a good pairing for Venus.
Today the pair are drawing close, currently separated by 5.5°. Close approach will occur on the 17th when the pair will rise in the dawn separated by only 35′. The closest approach will happen well after sunrise in the islands, about 18:06HST at a separation of a mere 12′, easily close enough to fit in the same telescopic field. The major challenge here is that the conjunction will occur only 17° from the Sun.
Venus will outshine Jupiter by over a magnitude, -3.9 compared to Jupiter’s -1.8 magnitude. The sizes will be comparable as well. Venus will be smaller at only 10.3″ compared to Jupiter’s 31.6″ across at the equator.
In an odd twist, this conjunction will occur on the edge of the Beehive cluster, M44. The cluster is not likely to be very visible given the advent of dawn, but it will be there.
This week will see the reappearance of Jupiter in the dawn sky. This morning the planet will be 10° above the rising Sun, climbing quickly higher each morning.
Jupiter and the moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (left-right)Jupiter will join Venus in the dawn, the brighter Venus has been the dawn star for much of the year. The two will rendezvous for a very close conjunction on the 17th and 18th. After the meeting Venus will disappear into the Sun’s glare leaving Jupiter a turn as the dawn star.
Look for a bright, -2 magnitude object directly above the bright glow of dawn. Venus will be 15° higher tomorrow morning, much brighter at -3.9 magnitude. The distance between the two diminishing over the next two weeks as Jupiter rises and Venus slides towards the Sun.
Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter’s moon Io within a two-week period, leading astronomers to speculate that these presumed rare “outbursts,” which can send material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than previously thought. The observations were made using the W. M. Keck Observatory and Gemini Observatory, both near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Images of Io obtained at different infrared wavelengths (in microns, μm, or millionths of a meter) with the W. M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter Keck II telescope on Aug. 15, 2013 (a-c) and the Gemini North telescope on Aug. 29, 2013 (d). Credit: Imke de Pater and Katherine de Kleer, UC Berkely“We typically expect one huge outburst every one or two years, and they’re usually not this bright,” said Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of one of two papers describing the eruptions. “Here we had three extremely bright outbursts, which suggest that if we looked more frequently we might see many more of them on Io.”
Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four large “Galilean” moons, is about 2,300 miles across, and, aside from Earth, is the only known place in the solar system with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that seen on Earth. Because of Io’s low gravity, large volcanic eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space.
De Pater’s long-time colleague and coauthor Ashley Davies, a volcanologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said that the recent eruptions resemble past events that spewed tens of cubic miles of lava over hundreds of square miles in a short period of time.
“These new events are in a relatively rare class of eruptions on Io because of their size and astonishingly high thermal emission,” he said. “The amount of energy being emitted by these eruptions implies lava fountains gushing out of fissures at a very large volume per second, forming lava flows that quickly spread over the surface of Io.”
All three events, including the largest, most powerful eruption of the trio on 29 Aug. 2013, were likely characterized by “curtains of fire,” as lava blasted out of fissures perhaps several miles long.
