© NASA/Cassini

Jupiter at aphelion

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Outer Planets feed

Objects: Jupiter
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The sky at

Jupiter's 11.9-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its furthest point to the Sun – its aphelion – at a distance of 5.46 AU.

In practice, however, Jupiter's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 10.2% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.

Finding Jupiter

Jupiter's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From Fairfield, at the moment of aphelion it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:53 (EDT), 19° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 23:54, 45° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 05:00, when it sinks below 7° above your western horizon.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

A chart of the path of Jupiter across the sky in 2005 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.

The position of Jupiter at the moment it passes aphelion will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Jupiter 12h47m00s 3°20'S Virgo -2.4 43.0"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 27 Jun 2024

The sky on 27 June 2024
Sunrise
05:19
Sunset
20:29
Twilight ends
22:37
Twilight begins
03:11

21-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

54%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:25 13:58 21:32
Venus 05:48 13:22 20:55
Moon 00:01 05:40 11:31
Mars 02:15 09:12 16:09
Jupiter 03:29 10:50 18:11
Saturn 00:10 05:52 11:33
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

03 Apr 2005  –  Jupiter at opposition
05 Jun 2005  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
04 Mar 2006  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
04 May 2006  –  Jupiter at opposition

Image credit

© NASA/Cassini

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
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