Live coverage: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter

Before sunrise on Thursday 19 January, observers in Western Europe can see an interesting celestial conjunction in the southern sky. At about 6am local time, the waning gibbous Moon, largest planet Jupiter and Spica — the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo — all lie in a line encompassed by the field of view of a typical 7x or 8x binocular.

Researchers have paired the continent-wide Very Large Baseline Array radio telescope system with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to determine the position of Saturn and its moons to within two miles — at a range of nearly a billion miles.

Juno programme officials hold a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory following the successful orbital insertion of the space probe around the gas giant Jupiter.