Jupiter's moons visible with good binoculars right now

I’m gonna try and view it tonight.

Thanks for the heads up on this!

Yup, guess I’ll head out to Mt Adams tonight and camp out there.

Time to break out the telescope.

And watch it get wet in the constant rain…

This is a little bit like the “supermoon” hype. It’s a good opposition, but not dramatically different from any other.

Jupiter’s moons are visible in decent binoculars pretty much any time Jupiter itself is visible; some people claim to be able to see them with the naked eye.

As they pretty much always are:

I will say that the night I spotted the Jovian moons in my (very mediocre) telescope was a really profound experience for me. Seems a little silly when we’re talking about a few tiny dots of light, but it’s true. I wasn’t expecting to see them at all, I just wanted to see what Jupiter looked like up close… and there they were.

+1. The planet itself is cool enough, but seeing the moons hanging there adds a certain something.

I saw them through a little telescope a college buddy set up on a footpath on campus. When people would walk by he’d say “Hey, you wanna look at Jupiter?” and they’d shrug him off like he was panhandling for change, take a few more steps down the path, stop, turn, say “Wait. Jupiter?” and then come back for a look. It was a fun evening.

I love this kind of story. There is something magical about sharing those views people normally never see.

This reminds me of this video looking at something closer to home…

Was so bummed that trees were blocking a crystal clear night so I texted my nieces to see if they could see Jupiter and they had a perfect view! So 11:30 at night I zoom over to my sister’s house in my pajamas so I could join them to view it. My binoculars stunk and I could only see Jupiter itself, but my brother-in-law had some superb binocs and we were able to see Jupiter, a smudge of red, and 3 moons! Anyone know if I have this right (see pic below), and if the outer moon is Ganymede or Callisto? Since we only saw 3 moons, I figured Callisto was the one at the 2:00 position. I could have Io and Europa backwards since they are perfectly equidistant on either side of Jupiter as pictured (and very close compared to Callisto).

Jupiter

I use this site to figure out which is which.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/observing-tools/jupiter_moons/jupiter.html

I have an entry level refractor that came with a cell phone adapter. I tried taking a photo of Jupiter and the Galilean moons.

I found it really fiddly to get the phone set up right for taking a picture. I need to learn how to adjust the exposure. Jupiter is just a bright blur in the photo, but when I was looking at it, I could make out two dark bands on Jupiter. I also have a blue tooth remote which allowed me to take the picture without touching the camera which would cause everything to go jiggly. In this photo, the moons from left to right are Europa, Io, Ganymede, Callisto.

Very cool!

This thread reminded me that I’d been waiting for Jupiter to rise early enough and to grab the binoculars I got for Christmas - so thanks!. And then I had to wait through several days of crappy weather. Tonight is nice, though. Even just from the front porch, with a street light kind of between me and Jupiter I can easily see 3. Will head back out a bit later when it has gotten fully dark and Jupiter is a bit higher in the sky.

I’m always in awe of how Jupiter is so damn big that it is a pretty good size disk in my 10x binoculars, even though it is nearly half a billion miles away.

OP is a hoax. Dozens of people at least know Jupiter is flat!

It as raining and cloudy for most of yesterday, but there was enough breaks in the cloud for me to have a look at Jupiter. It looked the same as the previous viewings a few days earlier.