Jupiter through telescope how to#

When we look at Jupiter with a telescope, the part we see is mostly ice-crystal clouds made of ammonia (white) and ammonium hydrosulfide (brown) ices. But there is no surface–Jupiter’s layers sort of smoothly blend into one another. At the center is a massive, hot, icy core. It’s called a “gas” giant because those are gases on Earth, but gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are mostly made of extremely hot, extremely high-pressure liquid hydrogen with a cooler hydrogen-helium atmosphere. Jupiter is 139,900 km across, or 11 times wider than the Earth and 318 times more massive. Jupiter is a gas giant-a planet made mostly of hydrogen and helium. If you don’t know where Jupiter is, and you’d like a little more guidance on what to look for on the planet, read on. Jupiter also has two faint dark stripes, or “cloud bands”, which run parallel to the equator.

Look for the moons, which appear as four stars, kind of in a line with Jupiter’s equatorial plane. It will still look pretty small, even at higher magnification. You may then increase the magnification with a shorter focal length eyepiece. It will appear as a fairly small, bright dot.

Use a low magnification, long focal length eyepiece to find and center the object.

Jupiter through telescope how to#

If you already know where Jupiter is, or you know how to find it with an app, go ahead and just point your telescope at it. The giant planet Jupiter is one of the easiest planets to find and observe in the solar system. In this article, we’ll go over how to find Jupiter with the naked eye, as well as how to get the most out of seeing Jupiter using a telescope.