Fly Me To The Moon Jupiter and Full
Moon Dominate Wednesday Night Sky
Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
Date: 27 November 2012 Time: 11:11 PM ET
early Wednesday evening (
Nov. 28), soon after the sun has set below the horizon, there will be two bright objects rising into the night sky. They are the nearly full moon and a brilliant silvery star-like object shining with a steady glow — the planet Jupiter.
Jupiter and the moon will rise in the east-northeast, opposite of the sunset, offering stargazers an celestial treat. Calendars and almanacs will tell you that the moon will be full on this night, but that's not necessarily true. The moon will actually officially turn full officially many hours earlier, at 9:46 a.m. EST (1446 GMT, or 6:46 a.m. PST) on Wednesday, less than an hour after the peak of a minor penumbral lunar eclipse.
By the time the moon appears to observers later in the evening, it will technically be a waning gibbous moon. But while the moon will be just a little less than 100-percent illuminated, it will probably still look to many observers as if it was a true full moon. For most places, Jupiter will appear to hover just above and to the upper left of the moon.
Jupiter is now the first bright object that comes out each evening in the night sky. It shines low in the east-northeast as twilight fades, far to the lower left of the Pleiades and more closely to the left of the V-shaped Hyades cluster and the bright orange star Aldebaran.
The planet will arrive at opposition on Sunday (Dec. 2), making it a brilliant target ideally situated for telescope observing. Jupiter currently lies due south at around midnight local time, 10:45 p.m. by mid-December and 9:40 p.m. by year's end.
In even a small telescope, Jupiter's belts, spots, rifts, and other markings invite night after night of study. Almost any common details of Jupiter's cloud features that are reasonably within range of your telescope could be visible at steady moments late on these nights.
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