Jupiter is extremely bright, the fourth brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon and Venus, impossible to miss as it shines vividly in the sky.  Even under the most light polluted skies on Planet Earth, you can still spot Jupiter, which blazes forth at double the brightness of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.

For whatever mystifying reason, this readly observable fact is not commonplace knowledge in our modern time, as it was known down throughout all world history.  People today grow up in America, finish school and reach adulthood, and even obtain graduate degrees in the sciences without realizing that Jupiter is just outside their door almost every clear night of the year.  

There is a widespread misconception that a telescope is required to see Jupiter and the other planets, and that they invisible otherwise.  I've heard prominent individuals in the media make misinformed declarations on the air of planetary invisibility.  Many times I've pointed out Jupiter to friends who INSIST that that bright "star" is not actually the Planet Jupiter, but rather an airplane or even a UFO!  It must be anything BUT a planet because the planets are invisible, right?

But this is puzzlingly contradictory since many informed, educated people have learned that Jupiter is one of the "classical planets," including Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn, which were known for millennia before the invention of the telescope.  Well then, if that's the case, why would one require a telescope to see them today?  And yet you can read any literature from pre-industrial times and find numerous references to the planetsin the sky, and many other aspects of Classical Astronomy that were formerly well known in times past. 

The longstanding astronomy tradition that prevailed down through all human history was broken some time in the mid-19th century.  I've written about this before and hope to write about it again.  But the fact is, the educational establishment, the media, and the entirety of contemporary mainstream culture has failed to transmit to the public such ordinary facts of the night sky.  It is for this reason that I have devoted over a third of a century to teaching such simple, readily observable astronomy phenomena to others, and constantly have the same conversations over and over.  So I'm thankful to you for your interest!

My Third Joversary

The current season is my third "Joversary."  According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word anniversary come from a Latin root which means "to turn the year" and reckons the number of "annual" measures since an event.  So I coined the word "Joversary" to reckon the number of complete 12 year cycles of the the planet Jupiter.  

As as explained in our Signs & Seasons astronomy curriculum, the Sun appears to move in an annual cycle through the constellations of the zodiac, and returns to the same spot after a year.  The Moon moves in a monthly cycle through the same constellations.  But Jupiter is a slower-moving outer planet and completes a cycle of the constellations every 12 years, spending an entire year passing through each constellation.  

I first discovered Jupiter shortly after its opposition in Taurus in 1988.  So I've always been sentimental every 12 years when Jupiter passes through this same constellation and count that as a "Joversary."   Here's the dates of the similar oppositions of Jupiter in Taurus over the years:

• November 23, 1988
• November 28, 2000  My First Joversary
• December 3, 2012      My Second Joversary
• December 7, 2024     My Third Joversary

The Joversary cycle is not a perfect 12 years, but includes an extra couple days.  And that sort of "loose change" adds a lot of interest to astronomy, since these cycles are always a little different and do not repeat perfectly over the span of a human lifetime.

The current season is now three complete Joversaries since I first discovered this bright planet 36 years ago in the late 1980s.  And I hope to have a couple more Joversaries before leaving this mudball!  Hope you enjoy this personal recollection.

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As a child of the Space Age of the 1960s, I was an astronomy enthusiast from my earliest years.  But like everyone else, all I learned in school and the media were the same old weary "astro-facts" of "big ball astronomy" -- unobservable details of the solar system such as the sizes of the planets and their distances from the Sun.  This is how the subject was mishandled 50+ years and is still mishandled today.  As a little kid, I would gaze up at the stars sensing that there was something more to learn and wishing that I could learn it.  But that did not happen until adulthood, after the school years ended.   

In the winter of 1969, my second grade teacher Mrs. Tintera taught the class how to recognize the constellation Orion, which was then seasonably visible in the evening sky.  She also assigned me to write a report about the constellation Taurus, which was my "zodiac sign."  So at age 7, I learned these two constellations, and the story of the Hunter fighting the Bull, locked in their neverending celestial confrontation.  I was also intrigued that Orion was similar to my last name, making it more special to me.   These constellations became beloved lifelong friends who have visited my sky every winter for the last five and a half decades.

In spite of growing up as a self-styled astronomy enthusiast, Orion and Taurus were among the small handful constellations that I could identify into adulthood.  Fast forward 20 years and I'm a newlywed husband living in the Washington, D.C. area and working at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  I found a copy of Astronomy magazine at a newstand near my office.  This mag had a lot of the usual "big ball astronomy" stuff but included a star map showing the positions of planets.  This wasn't much help at first but it planted the idea that maybe the planets were not invisible after all.

One day in late 1988 or early 1989 I was watching the Channel 4 TV news program and the popular local weatherman Bob Ryan (no known relation) revealed that the planets Jupiter and Mars were currently passing through the constellation Taurus!  Since this was one of the few constellations that I actually knew, I had high hopes of being able to pick out these planets.  The next night after work, on my walk home from the Metro station, I looked up and saw this scene....