The planet named after the king of the gods, according to old Roman mythology, is not only visible all night long right now, but it also is about as close to us Earthlings as it'll be in 2011.

This week, it's around 372 million miles away and by far is the brightest starlike object in our Butler night sky. No matter how much urban lighting you have to put up with, you can easily see 88,000 mile wide Jupiter in the low eastern sky as evening begins. Through the rest of the night it'll take a high arc high westward across the southern half of the sky.

For you early morning risers, Jupiter's still putting on a great show in the western sky as it prepares to set around sunrise.

Just a few weeks ago, Jupiter reached what astronomers call opposition. It's dubbed that because just like a full moon Jupiter and the sun are at opposite ends of the sky. This happens because Earth lies between the sun and Jupiter.

Since they're at opposite ends of our celestial dome, just like a full moon, as soon as the sun sets in the west, Jupiter rises in the east and vice versa. The Jovian giant is prowling across the sky all night long for our perusal!

Earth and Jupiter get into the opposition position every 399 days, or a little longer than every 13 months. That's because it takes Earth slightly longer than 365 days to make one complete orbit of the sun while it takes Jupiter 12 years to make its much larger solar circuit.

So in the year's time Earth takes to circle the sun, Jupiter's only made it a 12th of the way around our home star. Because of that, it takes the Earth about another month to catch up to where it's once again in line between the sun and the king of the planets.

If you have super eagle eyes, there are times when Jupiter looks like it has tiny little appendages on either side of it. These are Jupiter's moons.

There's no way you can visually resolve them with your naked eyes, but no matter how good your eyesight is, even a small pair of binoculars will reveal up to four of Jupiter's brightest moons that look like tiny little stars on either side of the great planet. I'll have much more on the moons in next week's column.

Not only can you easily see Jupiter's moons with a small telescope, but you also can clearly resolve the disk of the planet and maybe some of its cloud bands and zones that stripe the big guy of the solar system.

Jupiter is mostly just a big ball of hydrogen and helium gas, but in its outer atmosphere there's methane, ammonia, sulfur and other gases that create the multicolor cloud bands. There are two darker bands of clouds on either side of Jupiter's equator that are the easiest to spot.

There also are storms circulating in Jupiter's upper atmosphere with the biggest one known as the Great Red Spot. It's three times the diameter of our Earth. This giant hurricane like storm has been raging on Jupiter for hundreds of years.

Despite its moniker, the Great Red Spot isn't all that red but much more like a pale pink. Unless you have a moderate to large telescope and super clear conditions, it's hard to spot it in Jupiter's southern horizon.

What also makes it tough to see is that it's not always facing Earth. That's because Jupiter rapidly rotates on its axis once every 10 hours, so half the time the Great Red Spot is facing away from us.

A really handy website I like to use to keep up with the Great Red Spot's visibility is www.skyandtele-scope.com/observing/objects/javascript/3304091.html from Sky and Telescope Magazine. Seeing that pale pink storm is definitely a stargazing challenge.

In general, viewing Jupiter through a telescope requires patience.

First off, wait until Jupiter is at least 30 degrees above the horizon so you don't have to look through as much of Earth's blurring atmosphere to see it. This week it should be high enough for decent viewing after about 7 p.m.

Also, it's a good practice whenever you have your telescope trained on any of the planets to take long continual views through the eyepiece. That'll not only give your eyes a chance to get use to the light level within the eyepiece, but you'll also have a better chance of catching extra clearer views of Jupiter through the ever changing clarity of Earth's atmosphere.

Get use to seeing the king of the planets in our night sky as it'll be visible in the evening through late March!

Celestial happening

The annual Leonid meteor shower peaks this coming Thursday night/Friday morning. From about 2 a.m. to morning twilight, away from heavy urban lighting, you may see as many as 20 to 25 meteors, or “shooting stars,” an hour.

Lie back on a lawn chair and roll your eyes all around the sky. They're called the Leonids because they seem to emanate in the sky from the general direction of the constellation Leo the Lion.

Unfortunately, they'll be a bright half moon in the eastern sky that'll at least partially wipe out all but the brightest meteors.