Look for the Moon to point out Jupiter and Saturn Friday night

Jupiter will be bright through September as it reaches opposition on September 26, when it will be exactly opposite the Sun in our sky.

Throughout the week, the Moon has been sliding toward Saturn and on toward Jupiter in the southeastern sky after dark. Look Friday evening, around 10 p.m. for the Moon between Jupiter and Saturn. These close appearances, astronomers call them conjunctions, are a great way to find the planets.

They just appear close. The Moon will be 226,935 miles away, Jupiter 371 million miles, and Saturn 833 million miles.  The light from the Moon takes 1.2 seconds, Jupiter 33 miles, and Saturn more than an hour to reach Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope recently captured stunning views of Jupiter. Its inferred cameras produced details not previously seen.

“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emerita of the University of California, Berkeley. De Pater led the observations of Jupiter with Thierry Fouchet, a professor at the Paris Observatory, as part of an international collaboration for Webb’s Early Release Science program.

Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, a million times fainter than the planet. Also making an appearance are two of Jupiter's 59 moons, tiny Amalthea and Adrastea. Jovian moons are named for descendants or lovers of the Jupiter (Roman mythology) or Zeus (Greek mythology).

“This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” Fouchet said. Researchers have already begun analyzing Webb data to get new science results about our solar system’s largest planet.