Thammasat University students who are fond of astronomy will be interested to know that the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) has announced that on the evening of Tuesday, 14 July, the planet Jupiter will be at its brightest this year when it is closest to the Earth.

The Thammasat University Library owns a number of guidebooks and other literature about the planet Jupiter and its neighbors.

As soon as the sun sets over the horizon, Jupiter should appear in the southeastern skies until dawn. The planet should be visible without need for telescopes or other magnifying instruments, as long as the skies are sufficiently clear.

With a small telescope, it should be possible to see Jupiter’s four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Jupiter has 79 known moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.

More powerful telescopes should make it possible to view Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from 10pm to 1am. The Great Red Spot is a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 1600s when it was first seen by telescope.

TU students may recall that in April 2017, cloudy skies resulted in a disappointing spectacle for Bangkok residents, while elsewhere in the Kingdom, stargazers in Chiang Mai, Nakhon Ratchasima and Chachoengsao Provinces saw the planet Jupiter at its closest to the Earth, causing an eclipse on Jupiter. In 2017 in Bangkok, a crowd gathered at Siam Paragon Mall on April 8 to take part in an activity organised by NARIT under the Ministry of Science and Technology to witness the phenomenon.

NARIT is a research institute under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation. Its main missions are to carry out, support, and promote the development of astronomy and astrophysics in Thailand through research, public outreach, and educational activities.

The Thai National Observatory (TNO) is NARIT’s main facility, atop Thailand’s highest mountain, Doi Inthanon in Doi Inthanon National Park, Chom Thong District, Chiang Mai Province. This year, NARIT has completed the construction of the Thai National Radio Telescope (TNRT), a 40m single-dish short-millimetre telescope in Huai Hong Khrai Royal Development Study Centre at Doi Saket District in Chiang Mai Province.

The largest planet in the Solar System

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is one of the brightest objects visible in the night sky, and has been known to ancient civilizations since before recorded history. It is named after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can be bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and is on average the third-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.

Thoughts about Jupiter

Here are some statements about Jupiter by noted authors. Many of them are represented in the collection of the TU Library:

I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.

• Soren Kierkegaard in: Either/or, Volume 1

How much are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to ? Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five?

• Henrik Ibsen in G. Brandes, Henrik Ibsen.

Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter. These last, with an eye to getting a position in Florence, he quickly named ‘the Mediciean Stars. But when all was finished, no one besides my brother could get a glimpse of Jupiter or Saturn, for the great length of the tube would not allow it to be kept in a straight line. This difficulty, however, was soon removed by substituting tin tubes.

• Caroline Herschel, in Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel.

The vastness of heavens stretches my imagination…Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

• Richard P. Feynman in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1

The universe is globe-shaped, either because that is the most perfect shape of all, needing no joint, an integral whole; or because that is the most capacious of shapes, which is most fitting because it is to contain and preserve all…The first and highest of all is the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains itself and all things, and is therefore motionless. It is the location of the universe, to which the motion and position of all the remaining stars is referred. For though some consider that it also changes in some respect, we shall assign another cause for its appearing to do so in our deduction of the Earth’s motion. There follows Saturn, the first of the wandering stars, which completes its circuit in thirty years. After it comes Jupiter which moves in a twelve-year long revolution… We find, then, in this arrangement the marvellous symmetry of the universe, and a sure linking together in harmony of the motion and size of the spheres, such as could be perceived in no other way. For here one may understand, by attentive observation, why Jupiter appears to have a larger progression and retrogression than Saturn, and smaller than Mars, and again why Venus has larger ones than Mercury; why such a doubling back appears more frequently in Saturn than in Jupiter, and still more rarely in Mars and Venus than in Mercury; and furthermore why Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are nearer to the Earth when in opposition than in the region of their occultation by the Sun and re-appearance. Indeed Mars in particular at the time when it is visible throughout the night seems to equal Jupiter in size, though marked out by its reddish colour; yet it is scarcely distinguishable among stars of the second magnitude, though recognized by those who track it with careful attention.

• Nicolaus Copernicus on the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)