© 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 Ashburn, at the moment of aphelion it will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 22:56, when it reaches an altitude of 7° above your eastern horizon. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 03:50, 43° above your southern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight around 06:41, 28° above your south-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 2017 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 13h26m20s 7°28'S Virgo -2.3 39.9"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 16 Feb 2017

The sky on 16 February 2017
Sunrise
06:58
Sunset
17:48
Twilight ends
19:18
Twilight begins
05:28

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

67%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:30 11:31 16:31
Venus 08:19 14:46 21:13
Moon 22:37 04:25 10:08
Mars 08:53 15:14 21:35
Jupiter 22:11 03:50 09:28
Saturn 03:17 08:04 12:50
All times shown in EST.

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

06 Feb 2017  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion
07 Apr 2017  –  Jupiter at opposition
09 Jun 2017  –  Jupiter ends retrograde motion
08 Mar 2018  –  Jupiter enters retrograde motion

Image credit

© NASA/Cassini

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39.04°N
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