Jupiter is back: See the gas giant live, online

Jupiter is back. After hiding in the glare of the sun for much of the summer, the gas giant is highly visible once again, and you can get a closer look at it online, live, right here.

On Sunday evening, beginning at 10:30 p.m. PDT, the team at the online astronomy site Slooh.com will turn their telescope on Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and stream the results for the world to see.

You can watch the show live in the video box above.

Over the course of the broadcast viewers should get to see Jupiter’s four largest moons -- Ganymede, Europa, Io and Callisto -- and watch them slowly dance around the planet.

Your host, Paul Cox, who works as Slooh’s outreach coordinator, will look at how the planet’s Great Red Spot has changed since April, when Slooh’s telescope last imaged it. He will also check in on Jupiter’s other storm known as “Red Jr.”

In October, Slooh’s telescope caught an image of the Great Red Spot and Red Jr. as they passed each other. You can see it for yourself, right here.

During the broadcast, Cox will also explain how anyone with a pair of regular binoculars can spot Jupiter and its largest moons, known as the Galilean moons.

“Even kids’ play binoculars have optics as good as the telescope Galileo Galilei used to discover the four Galilean moons 403 years ago,” wrote Slooh President Patrick Paolucci in an email to the Los Angeles Times. “We’ll show viewers how to find and view Jupiter using binoculars, and after the show we’ll post some additional star charts online.”

If you would like to view Jupiter yourself in the night sky, currently it rises locally about 1 a.m.

Happy viewing!

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