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By Tony Rice, WRAL Contributor / NASA Ambbadador
If fireworks are on the agenda tonight, the night sky can provide the pre-show.
The sun sets around 8:30 pm this evening, look to the south. Jupiter, the second brightest object in the sky, will be hard to miss. Even a cheap, low-cost telescope will show Jupiter's four largest moons (there are 65 others).
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Around 9pm, the moons will be arranged with Io (the innermost moon of Jupiter), then Europa so close one of the other on the left, that they will be hard to distinguish. Ganymede and Callisto more to the right.
Look again between midnight and 2 am, and Europa will be in orbit behind Jupiter. These moons move quickly, as Europa encircles Jupiter every 85 hours.
Look to the west for the brightest object, Venus. A small telescope will show that just over half of Venus is brightened this week. Venus goes to bed at 11 pm but you will probably be diving under trees and buildings for yourself long before that.
These two luminous planets are all that you will see at dusk, or more exactly, at civil twilight, the period between sunset and the geometric center of the sun. is 6 degrees below the horizon. Then comes the nautical twilight shortly after 21h. when more stars appear and planets appear
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Around 9 pm, look to the southeast for Saturn. Saturn will be just above the lid of the shape of the teapot of stars in Sagittarius.
A moderate telescope reveals the rings of Saturn, which seem at their best now. By 2024, the orbit of Saturn will bring it to such a point that the rings will disappear at the sight of the eye, only to reappear over the next ten years.
Jupiter and Venus should be easily visible from all fireworks shows, but Saturn can be a little harder to see. If your plans tonight take you to a more rural setting, an asteroid may be in sight.
Just look up and to the right of Saturn for the asteroid of the Vesta 4 main belt. Vesta is the size of Ohio, among the largest objects in the asteroid belt. In 2011, NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbited Vesta, studying the early formation of the solar system. The orbit of Vesta is closest to the Earth, which highlights it without a telescope.
You may have seen claims in social media and the British tabloids suggest that Vesta is a threat. He is tall – about the size of Ohio – and so tall that he is considered a minor planet. But Vesta's orbit keeps it safe away from the Earth.
Vesta is a comfortable 109 million kilometers. Venus, Mars and the Sun are closer
Tony Rice is a NASA / JPL volunteer Solar System Ambbadador and Software Engineer at Cisco Systems. You can follow him on Twitter @rtphokie.
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