The Giants of Summer
29.07.2020

As Comet NEOWISE sweeps through northern summer skies, Jupiter and Saturn are shining brightly, near opposition. With Jupiter opposite the Sun on July 14 and Saturn on July 21, the giant planets are still near their closest to planet Earth in 2020.

Saturn and Jupiter over Italian Peaks
20.10.2020

Saturn and Jupiter are getting closer. Every night that you go out and check for the next two months, these two bright planets will be even closer together on the sky. Finally, in mid-December...

A Lunar Corona with Jupiter and Saturn
19.01.2021

Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently.

APOD: 2025 November 11 Б Jupiter in Ultraviolet from Hubble
11.11.2025

Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the small fields that it sees, the Hubble Space Telescope was being directed to regularly image the entire Jovian giant.

APOD: 2026 January 6 Б Jupiters Clouds in High Definition from Juno
6.01.2026

How complex is Jupiter? NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter's magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth's simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south.

APOD: 2020 August 13 Б Jupiter and Saturn Rising Beyond Alien Throne Rock
13.08.2020

Whatбplanets are those behind that unusualбrock spire? Saturn (lower left) and Jupiter.б This month, after sunset, the bright planetary duo are quite prominent toward the southeast.б Now your view of our Solar...

Great Conjunction over Sicilian Lighthouse
8.12.2020

DonБt miss the coming great conjunction. In just under two weeks, the two largest planets in our Solar System will angularly pass so close together in Earth's sky that the Moon would easily be able to cover them both simultaneously. This pending planetary passage -- on December 21 -- will be the closest since 1623.

Saturn and Jupiter in Summer 2020
12.12.2020

During this northern summer Saturn and Jupiter were both near opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. Their paired retrograde motion, seen about every 20 years, is followed from 19 June through 28 August in this panoramic composite as they wander together between the stars in western Capricornus and eastern Sagittarius.

Jupiter and Saturn Great Conjunction: The Movie
30.12.2020

Yes, but have you seen a movie of Jupiter and Saturn's Great Conjunction? The featured time-lapse video was composed from a series of images taken from Thailand and shows the two giant planets as they angularly passed about a tenth of a degree from each other.

APOD: 2026 January 18 Б Jupiter from the Webb Space Telescope
18.01.2026

This infrared view of Jupiter by Webb is illuminating. High-resolution infrared images of Jupiter from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) reveal, for example, differences between high-floating bright clouds -- including the Great Red Spot -- and low-lying dark clouds.