Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, January 14th.  The sun will rise at 8:16.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 10 minutes, setting at 5:27.   The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:29 tomorrow morning.

The planet Jupiter will appear close to the nearly full moon this evening.  The moon will pass about 10 of its diameters south of Jupiter around 1 a.m. tomorrow morning.  Until then, Jupiter will appear to the left of the moon.  This is a good time to view Jupiter with a small telescope.  Even binoculars will detect a tiny disk and several of Jupiter’s satellites.  Jupiter is a gas giant planet made primarily of hydrogen.  The clouds contain methane and ammonia whipped into parallel bands by Jupiter’s rapid rotation of nearly 10 hours.  The planet has a noticeable equatorial bulge, which is accentuated visually by its horizontal cloud bands.  Jupiter’s equatorial diameter is 89,000 miles [143,000 km], 11 times that of the earth.  [Jupiter’s volume could hold about 1,300 Earths, but its mass is only about 318 Earths.  Jupiter is less dense than the Earth by a factor of four.]

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

Addendum

[Content in brackets was not included in the broadcast program due to time constraints.]

Jupiter, the Moon and the bright stars of winter at 9 p.m. on January 14, 2014. By 1 a.m. the Moon will have slipped to be directly below Jupiter. The Moon moves about its own diameter against the stars each hour.  Created using Stellarium.

Jupiter as seen by the Cassini spacecraft as it passed by Jupiter gaining velocity on its way to Saturn.  The black dot is the shadow of Europa. Credit:  NASA/JPL – Caltech.