Where is Jupiter tonight?
Jupiter is in the morning sky, in the constellation Leo. Look for it before sunrise, or late at night once it has risen.
- Brightness
- brilliantmagnitude -2.1
- Constellation
- Leo
- Distance from Earth
- 802 million kmits light left 45 minutes ago
- Opposition
- 11 February 2027
How to recognise Jupiter
The king. Jupiter is the bright, steady, cream-white light that dominates the sky for months at a time and can be up at any hour. If there is a brilliant star that doesn't twinkle and it's too late at night to be Venus, it's Jupiter. Steady binoculars will show up to four of its moons as tiny dots in a line.
Those four moons change places from night to night. Galileo watched them do it in 1610 and realised that not everything orbits the Earth. Opposition is the night Jupiter sits opposite the Sun in our sky: it rises at sunset, stays up all night and is at its closest and brightest.