Washington: Look southeast after dark this month and you'll see a bright white star looking right back at you; this is the planet Jupiter, shining so brightly that you can't help but notice it even through city light pollution, says the Sky and Telescope magazine.
Jupiter will be nearest to Earth on Wednesday and would be visible to the naked eye.
According to the magazine, on May 3 the planet would be positioned opposite the Sun and would be nearest to the Earth for the year.
Jupiter will remain nearly as bright for the rest of May and throughout the coming summer, because it doesn't get much farther from the Earth even several months after opposition, says the magazine adding that it will be the "star" of all the warm-weather nights in 2006.
The magazine further says, telescope users have been following a strange event brewing on Jupiter.
Amid the planet's cloud belts, a long-enduring "white oval" unexpectedly turned reddish last February, matching the colour of Jupiter's centuries-old “Great Red Spot”.
Both amateur and professional astronomers have been tracking "Red Spot Junior."
According to the magazine, Jupiter's spots are enormous cyclonic storms somewhat like hurricanes on Earth.
Planetary astronomers believe that while the white ones are topped by clouds of ammonia crystals in Jupiter's super-cold upper atmosphere, the reddish tints arise from contaminant compounds of sulfur, phosphorus, or hydrocarbons welling up from inside Jupiter's mysterious and gaseous interior.
To see the Great Red Spot and "Red Spot Junior," one would need a large amateur telescope with high-quality optics. Jupiter rotates once every 9 hours 56 minutes.
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