Eh, Venus can be as much as 3 hours before sunrise, or 3 hours after sunset, and much of the time folks are awake falls into that range anyway.
For future reference, Venus and Jupiter are by far the brightest things in the sky, after the Sun and Moon. Mars is fairly close to the Earth, and thus also decently bright (brighter than most stars), but Jupiter’s size is more than enough to make up for its greater distance. If you see something really bright in the sky, it’s close to sunrise or sunset, and it’s in the part of the sky where the Sun would be (towards the westish in the evening, or eastish in the morning), then it’s probably Venus. If you see something really bright in the sky and it doesn’t meet those criteria, it’s almost certainly Jupiter.
That’s a shame. You’d likely get a kick out of locating it sometime if you can get away from the city’s light pollution.
In the burbs or especially when we’re out camping we use the Big Dipper to locate Polaris, the North Star. If you take the two stars that form the outer lip of the dipper and move in the direction liquid would pour out, multiply their distance by 4 1/2 times and there’s Polaris. It’s also coincidentally the tip of the upper handle of the Little Dipper.
One minor exception would be the International Space Station, which can appear brighter than Jupiter. Of course its brisk motion and consequent brief visibility tends to discourage confusion.
How would one determine where in the sky to look for it? I’m (obviously) not experienced in astronomy, but I’d love to look for Jupiter with my 7-year old tonight.
Just to throw in my own experience: years ago, my mom bought my dad a telescope for Christmas (pretty similar to this one), and he’s only taken it out of the box once. So, when my little one started showing an interest in the planets a few weeks ago, I borrowed the scope from my dad and set it up.
Took one night of looking at nothing to figure out how to work it properly. On the second night, I saw where Jupiter was in the sky, sighted in and lined it up properly, and took a look. Meh. Spot of light. Then I switched eyepieces.
Hold the breath a minute so that the image stops microvibrating, and holy cow. There it is. Fat, easily-visible cloud stripe and all. Even cooler, I suddenly realized that those four pinpoints of light weren’t lens flares from nearby sources, but moons. Jupiter’s moons, and here I am eighty squillion miles away just havin’ a look-see. That’s pretty damn awesome.
Still got Dad’s scope. Can’t wait until Saturn gets back into viewing range.
I go out to my driveway with an 8" Dob and can see Jupiter and it’s moons, the Orion Nebula and Saturn’s rings quite nicely. In front of my drive, across the street, is a street light.
Now what you really want to look at is the quarter or half moon - it’s stunning.
Go for it. The view of Jupiter that I describe was obtained in my back yard. I live in a corner house, with a streetlight right on the corner, one step from my grass. Two other streetlights are visible from my backyard, on the adjacent street.
I don’t know what your light pollution situation is, but in my case it’s twofold. First, the fact that there’s light around means my eyes don’t get the chance to dilate as much as they might, so I don’t get to see as much detail. And second, smaller and dimmer stuff is naturally going to be really hard to zero in on.
If you want to look at planets and the moon, though, go for it; they’re really quite easy to find, since they tend to be brighter than just about everything else around. Dim galaxies and nebulae and whatnot, those’ll take a bit more work.
You can also go on campouts to dark sky locations. Look up your local astronomy clubs; they’ll probably sponsor such trips. Or you could even go to such an event without your own scope: Amateur astronomers generally like giving other folks looks through their scopes, and this is a great way to make up your mind on what (if anything) you want to buy yourself.
My 7-year old son was suitably impressed with seeing Jupiter. I was able to make out one faint moon with my crappy binoculars, but ti was still pretty cool.
Thanks for the follow up! That’s the type of thing he’ll remember, fondly, forever.
Did Jupiter appear disc-like through your binoculars? I’m a bit surprised you could only see one moon. Maybe it was cloudy? Or, so chilly that your hands were shaking and thereby screwing up the image? <= literally!
It was definitely hard to keep the image steady. I had to squint one eye closed to make out the one moon (it was at about the 2 o’clock position.) Jupiter itself seemed wider at the middle, rather than round. It’s pretty clear here tonight, but my eyes are getting pretty bad!
I just checked Stellarium and that would have been Ganymede (the largest moon). Screenshots:
Io is hiding, because tomorrow it will look like this:
Try using your peripheral vision to bring out the fainter objects. Look at something else in the field of the view and the object you’re actually interested in will usually brighten. And then dim again, when you try looking at it directly. Using averted vision is an art and takes practice.
<= literally!
Using averted vision is an art and takes practice.