THIS MONTH’S PLANETS
The king of the Solar System shines brightly in the evening sky, offering a splendid view for astronomers
PLANET OF THE MONTH
Jupiter is our planet of the month because it has some fascinating company in the night sky, and also because it will be ideally placed for everyone to observe, whether they’re looking at it with the naked eye or zooming in on it with a telescope. Jupiter will spend the whole of our observing period in the rather star-starved constellation of Aries, an unremarkable spray of stars to the west of Taurus. At the start of October Jupiter will be rising at sunset and will then be visible all through the night until it sinks into the west as dawn approaches. With a magnitude of -2.8, Jupiter will be a very stunning naked-eye object, looking like a bright blue-white ‘star’ a short distance to the west of the famous naked-eye star cluster, the Pleiades.