Jupiter spends its 2012-2013 apparition in Taurus, spectacularly close to the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters. This is good news for northern observers, who can see Taurus for a very long time and quite high in the sky.

Jupiter is reasonably well-placed for telescopic observing from July 2012 through April 2013. At the beginning of this period, Jupiter is visible only around dawn, but by October the king of planets is fairly high in the sky by midnight or earlier.

Virtually any telescope will show Jupiter's four Galilean moons and their interesting interactions with the planet or its shadow. During the course of every revolution, Io, Europa, and Ganymede pass in front of and then behind Jupiter’s disk, but Callisto passes north or south of Jupiter's disk during this apparition, due to the tilt of Jupiter's equator and Calliisto's orbital plane.

For the convenience of telescopic observers, we are making available a list of Jupiter's satellite phenomena from June 2012 through April 2013 to supplement the monthly lists that usually (but not always) appear in Sky & Telescope. The list is in the form of a 22-page PDF, so you'll need a free copy of Adobe Reader software to open it and print it.

Phenomena of Jupiter's Moons, June 2012 - April 2013

You can also run our Javascript utility to view the positions of Jupiter's moons at any moment.

Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot (GRS) is much harder to spot than the Galilean moons. Although it's quite large, the low contrast of the GRS can make it hard to see unless Jupiter is quite high above the horizon and the astronomical seeing is quite good. In addition, you need a reasonably big telescope (preferably at least 6 inches of aperture) with good optical quality.

But most important of all, you can only see the GRS when it's on the side of Jupiter that's facing Earth. And it's only reasonably easy to see within about an hour of the time that it transits, passing halfway across Jupiter's disk during each 9-hour and 55-minute rotation.

You can use our Javascript utility to find predicted times of GRS transits, or click here for a printable table of predicted GRS transits for this apparition.