This evening, look east. The brightest “star” climbing out of twilight is not a star at all. Jupiter, shining around magnitude -2.7, rises tonight as a golden beacon in the eastern sky. In just 14 days it reaches opposition—its closest, brightest point of the year—yet it’s already dazzling: about 11 times Earth’s diameter, 318 times our mass, wrapped in cloud bands of hydrogen and helium. Through simple backyard binoculars you can see four tiny points of light—Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto—alig