Jupiter opposition - 9th May 2018

[furrysocks2]

A few months away, but Jupiter will be increasing in apparent size over the next few months.

The following graph shows, for Greenwich latitude, Jupiter's observability for the next four years...

Red line shows it will transit the southern meridian during nighttime hours, ignore the blue line as Jupiter will be round the other side of the sun at the bottom of the troughs, error bars give some indication of the growth in apparent diameter, but are not to scale.

Minimum and maximum observable size shown below, although it won't reach maximum observable size this year.

 

Bottom line is this year's opposition will be better to view than the subsequent two, in terms of altitude from the UK, and will appearing slightly larger and higher in 2021 than this year.

The next two maximum altitude oppositions should be late 2025 and early 2027.

[parallaxerr]

Good stuff furrysocks. I've been reading the thread you originally displayed your charts in, new planetary scope inbound

[Knighty2112]

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing Jupiter again soon, and definitely around opposition time!  

[Knighty2112]

Out of curiosity I looked in Skysafari for the conjunctions of Jupiter & Mars, and their sizes now, and then at their respective sizes at opposition for each of them. Jupiter is currently showing at 33.3 seconds of arc, and will gain in size 11.5 seconds to be 44.8 seconds of arc at opposition in May. Mars however will gain a whooping 19.4 seconds of arc in size, from 4.4 seconds currently seen, to 24.2 seconds in its July opposition.

Jupiter size now;

 

Jupiter size at opposition May 9th;

 

Mars size now;

 

Mars size at opposition July 27th;

[furrysocks2]

2 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

 Mars however will gain a whooping 19.4 seconds of arc in size, from 4.4 seconds currently seen, to 24.2 seconds in its July opposition.

Unfortunately, Mars opposition will occur rather low in the sky as seen from the UK, and it will decrease in size quite rapidly as it rises higher...

[Littleguy80]

11 hours ago, furrysocks2 said:

A few months away, but Jupiter will be increasing in apparent size over the next few months.

The following graph shows, for Greenwich latitude, Jupiter's observability for the next four years...

Red line shows it will transit the southern meridian during nighttime hours, ignore the blue line as Jupiter will be round the other side of the sun at the bottom of the troughs, error bars give some indication of the growth in apparent diameter, but are not to scale.

Minimum and maximum observable size shown below, although it won't reach maximum observable size this year.

 

Bottom line is this year's opposition will be better to view than the subsequent two, in terms of altitude from the UK, and will appearing slightly larger and higher in 2021 than this year.

The next two maximum altitude oppositions should be late 2025 and early 2027.

Great diagram. Does Venus actually appear that large at maximum?!?

[John]

14 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Great diagram. Does Venus actually appear that large at maximum?!?

Yes it does - you can see the phase through good 10x50 binoculars when the apparent diameter of the planet gets reasonably large.

[Knighty2112]

16 hours ago, furrysocks2 said:

Unfortunately, Mars opposition will occur rather low in the sky as seen from the UK, and it will decrease in size quite rapidly as it rises higher...

Sadly, we can’t have our cake and eat it always. Even though Mars will be lower down to observe from the northern hemisphere, so not best place to observe it, the size increase will make it at least better to observe, with potential surface details easier to spot.  

[Stu]

9 hours ago, John said:

Yes it does - you can see the phase through good 10x50 binoculars when the apparent diameter of the planet gets reasonably large.

Indeed it does. This is an iPhone shot through the eyepiece showing the phase quite clearly!

[chiltonstar]

I do remember many years ago when my Mark 1 eyeballs were a bit younger being able to see the crescent shape of Venus with the naked eye.......not these days however - takes my long distance driving specs to even count 7 or 8 of the Pleiades!

Chris

[Stu]

1 minute ago, chiltonstar said:

takes my long distance driving specs to even count 7 or 8 of the Pleiades!

Think yourself lucky Chris, even with glasses I normally get to 6 max! Probably my skies don't help....

[Littleguy80]

47 minutes ago, Stu said:

Indeed it does. This is an iPhone shot through the eyepiece showing the phase quite clearly!

Great shot! Is there a good resource for finding out when it will next be a t maximum? A bit Googling seemed to be finding more Astrology sites than Astronomy. The good news is that according to the planets and stars my year has a chance of being good or possibly bad but definitely maybe good  

[Knighty2112]

2 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Great shot! Is there a good resource for finding out when it will next be a t maximum? A bit Googling seemed to be finding more Astrology sites than Astronomy. The good news is that according to the planets and stars my year has a chance of being good or possibly bad but definitely maybe good  

Skysafari lists all the planets conjunctions, oppositions etc, so you can easily see not only when they happen, but what it will look like in the sky at that date. 

 

[Littleguy80]

3 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Skysafari lists all the planets conjunctions, oppositions etc, so you can easily see not only when they happen, but what it will look like in the sky at that date. 

 

Thanks Gus! Never realised that info was in SkySafari! 

[Knighty2112]

5 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Thanks Gus! Never realised that info was in SkySafari! 

Yeah, if you press on one the little clock symbol next to any of the options listed under visibility it will show you what and where in the sky it is on that time/date.