Tonight it will be extra easy to locate the planet as waxing gibbous moon will be parked just to the lower left of Jupiter.

Although it's nearly 475 million miles away, still using even a small telescope, one can see at least some of the cloud bands that circle the gargantuan, 88,000-mile wide planet.

Sulfur, methane, and other gases combine to make these cloud bands. Beneath the cloud bands, Jupiter is mainly a giant ball of hydrogen gas with a solid core.

Through your telescope, you can also see something that Galileo Galilei saw in the 1600s. It was something that eventually led him in a lot of trouble. There are little ‘stars’ seen in a line on either side of Jupiter, they are actually the biggest moons of Jupiter.

They orbit Jupiter in periods of 2 to 17 days, and continuously change their alignment on either side of the planet. At night, all four of the moons are not seen because one or more of them may be either behind or in front of Jupiter, and thus is lost in the backdrop of the planet's glow.

These four moons are known as the Galilean moons because Galileo Galilei watched them as frequently as he could, using his small telescope in the early 1600s. He was not aware of the nature of either Jupiter or the moons, but it was he, who concluded that the moons were definitely orbiting Jupiter.

Thankfully, due to the fleet of robotic spacecraft that have visited or passed by Jupiter in the last 30 years, presently, we know a lot more about the Galilean moons.

Callisto and Ganymede are Jupiter’s largest moons, with diameters of around 3,000 and 3,300 miles, respectively. Both ways they are bigger than our own moon.