Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, January 7th.  The sun will rise at 8:18.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 1 minute, setting at 5:19.   The moon, at first quarter today, will set at 1:14 tomorrow morning.

The giant planet Jupiter was in opposition from the Sun two days ago, meaning that the Sun, Earth and Jupiter were pretty much in a line.  It was a time the Jupiter was closest to us.  The situation hasn’t changed much,  However you will notice that tomorrow I will not give the time that Jupiter rises because it will rise before sunset, but I will give its setting time.  Now Jupiter is about 391 million miles  (630 million km) away and slowly dropping behind the faster moving Earth.  Jupiter is so large that there is never bad time to view it with a small telescope,  but Jupiter appears largest right now.  Visible in telescopes are its four moons that change position from night to night.  The face of the planet shows atmospheric cloud bands that bear closer scrutiny with larger telescopes.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Jupiter and its four Galilean moons. The planet has to be over exposed to pick up the moons. The bump on the upper left of Jupiter’s image is another moon.  But the eye can handle the brightness difference with no problem. This is one of my old pictures I do believe.

Jupiter by Scott Anttila. Taken February 6, 2012