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If your night sky is clear this
weekend, try taking a look at

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Jupiter, our solar system’s
largest planet. Jupiter is in

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opposition on April 7th, meaning
the planet is directly opposite

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in the sky from the Sun and it’s
relatively close and bright.

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Jupiter is rising as the Sun
sets and setting as the Sun

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rises, so it’s up all night long
in the constellation Virgo, and

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depending on the time of night,
you can view three or four of

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Jupiter’s largest moons through
binoculars or a small telescope.

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And if you want to know what
Jupiter looks like through a big

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telescope, here's an image of
Jupiter that NASA’s Hubble Space

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Telescope took just a few days
ago, on April 3rd, 2017. Hubble

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regularly takes observations of
Jupiter as part of its Outer

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Planets Atmospheres Legacy
program, or OPAL. That program

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has been able to observe
movements in Jupiter’s clouds to

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measure the speeds of Jupiter’s
winds, study color changes, and

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watch changes on the Great Red
Spot, a huge storm on the

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planet. The Great Red Spot is
larger than the size of Earth,

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and has been shrinking over the
past 100 years, becoming more

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and more round. The OPAL program
makes global maps of Jupiter

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that can be rendered onto a
spherical model, and the team

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will be working in the coming
weeks on a new set of global

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maps of Jupiter from these
latest observations. So this

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image we’ve shown you is really
just a preview of what’s to

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come. But that’s not the only
way Hubble observes Jupiter.

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Hubble has been able to observe
auroras on Jupiter in

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ultraviolet wavelengths with its
Space Telescope Imaging

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Spectrograph. And Hubble has
been able to observe the greater

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Jovian system of Jupiter and its
moons - it’s taken images like

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this one of Callisto, Europa,
and Io transiting across the

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disk of Jupiter; Hubble has
observed Ganymede’s auroras move

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in a way that suggests the moon
has an underground saltwater

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ocean; and Hubble has seen
evidence of water vapor plumes

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erupting from the surface of
Europa. NASA uses Hubble

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observations of Jupiter to help
guide its robotic planetary

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explorers - the global maps of
Jupiter from the OPAL program

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provide context for the Juno
spacecraft’s up-close

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observations, and Hubble’s
evidence of water vapor plumes

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on Europa provides targets for
the upcoming Europa Clipper

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mission. So while you're looking
at Jupiter in your own night

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sky, take a minute to celebrate
the robots and spacecraft, like

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the Hubble Space Telescope, that
are ever expanding what we know

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about our solar system.

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www.nasa.gov/hubble
@NASAHubble