Oslo, Norway
Jupiter tonight
Visible tonight — best around 05:50 at 15° above the East horizon.
Computed for your location ·
Jupiter is a spectacular naked-eye planet — usually the second-brightest after Venus, sometimes brighter than Sirius. Even ordinary binoculars show up to four moons in a straight line beside it. That view is what made Galileo realise, in 1610, that not everything orbits Earth.
Tonight's altitude
Where Jupiter sits across the night
What it is
Jupiter in one paragraph
A gas giant, 11 times the diameter of Earth and 318 times its mass — more mass than all the other planets combined. Its atmosphere is banded with clouds of ammonia and water; the Great Red Spot is a storm larger than Earth that has raged for at least 350 years. Over 90 known moons.
Naked eye & binoculars
How to actually see it
Any small telescope shows the equatorial cloud bands and the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Come back the next night and they'll have visibly shifted position — you're watching a miniature solar system in real time.
Through a telescope
What you'll actually see in the eyepiece
A 100–150 mm telescope reveals finer belt structure, the Great Red Spot when it faces us, and shadow transits of moons across the planet's face. Colour cameras and a stacking app can turn a few minutes of video into a beautifully detailed disc.
Key facts
Jupiter at a glance
- Distance from Sun
- 778 million km
- Diameter
- 139,820 km (11× Earth)
- Year
- 11.9 Earth years
- Moons
- 95+ known