Fans of astronomy will be in for a treat as a special event is set to happen Monday night.

That's when Jupiter is set to make its closest approach to Earth since 1963, NASA said.

According to the space agency, the solar system's largest planet will be approximately 367 million miles in distance from Earth as opposed to its farthest distance of roughly 600 million miles.

NASA said the gas planet would appear bigger and brighter because of its opposition, which means that it'll be directly opposite the Sun in the sky as viewed from Earth.

“With good binoculars, the banding (at least the central band) and three or four of the Galilean satellites (moons) should be visible,” said NASA research astrophysicist Adam Kobelski in a blog post. “It’s important to remember that Galileo observed these moons with 17th-century optics. One of the key needs will be a stable mount for whatever system you use.”

Kobelski says the best place to view the unique event will be a high elevated spot in a dark and dry area.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —

The first NASA mission that will fly by a total of eight ancient asteroids has launched on its ambitious journey.

Weather conditions were greater than 90% favorable Saturday morning when the Lucy mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:34 a.m. ET.

Lucy will embark on a 12-year mission to explore Jupiter's Trojan asteroid swarms, which have never been observed. The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms -- one that's ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that lags behind it.

So far, our only glimpses of the Trojans have been artist renderings or animations. Lucy will provide the first high-resolution images of what these asteroids look like.

Lucy is the first spacecraft designed to visit and observe these asteroids, which are remnants from the early days of our solar system. The mission will help researchers effectively peer back in time to learn how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. Lucy's 12-year mission could also help scientists learn how our planets ended up in their current spots.

"At the heart of Lucy is the science and how it's going to talk to us about the Trojans," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

"It's so important to go observe them because these asteroids tell us about a chapter of our own story -- in this case, the history when the outer planets were forming in the solar system," Zurbuchen said. "I'm still amazed by the fact that if you pick up a rock or you look at one of those planetary bodies and you add science to it, it turns into a history book."

Visiting mysterious asteroids

There are about 7,000 Trojan asteroids, and the largest is 160 miles across. The asteroids represent the leftover material still hanging around after the giant planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, formed. Even though they share an orbit with Jupiter, the asteroids are still very distant from the planet itself -- almost as far away as Jupiter is from the sun, according to NASA.

The spacecraft is set to fly by an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and then it will explore seven of the Trojans. Over the course of its mission, Lucy will end up swinging back to Earth's orbit three separate times for gravity assists that can slingshot it on the right path. That will make Lucy the first spacecraft to travel to Jupiter and return to Earth.

The mission borrows its name from the Lucy fossil, the remains of an ancient human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. The skeleton has helped researchers piece together aspects of human evolution, and the NASA Lucy team members hope their mission will achieve a similar feat regarding the history of our solar system.

The Trojans "are held there by the gravitational effect of Jupiter and the sun, so if you put an object there early in the solar system's history, it's been stable forever," said Hal Levison, the principal investigator of the Lucy mission, based at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "These things really are the fossils of what planets formed from."

Both the fossil and the mission are a nod to the Beatles tune "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which is why the logo for the Lucy mission includes a diamond.

Over 12 years, Lucy will travel nearly 4 billion miles moving at about 400,000 miles per hour.

Lucy will specifically visit these asteroids, all named for heroes you might recognize from Homer's "The Iliad": Eurybates, Queta, Polymele, Leucus, Orus, Patroclus and Menoetius.

Eurybates was chosen because it's the largest remnant of an ancient massive collision, meaning that it could reveal a look at what's inside an asteroid. Observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope found that the small asteroid named Queta is a satellite of Eurybates.

Each of the asteroids Lucy will fly by differ in size and color.

"One of the really surprising things about the Trojans when we started to study them from the ground is just how different they are from one another," Levison said. " So if you want to understand what this population is telling us about how the planets formed, you need to understand that diversity and that's what Lucy is intended to do."

A feat of engineering

The Lucy spacecraft is more than 46 feet from tip to tip, largely due to its giant solar panels -- each about the width of a school bus -- designed to keep up a power supply to the spacecraft's instruments. But Lucy also has fuel to help it execute some skilled maneuvers on the way to the asteroids.

It took a team of more than 500 engineers and scientists to conceptualize and build the spacecraft, said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Lucy will be NASA's first mission to travel this far away from the sun without nuclear power," said Joan Salute, associate director for flight programs at NASA's Planetary Science Division."In order to generate enough energy, Lucy has two very large circular solar arrays that open up like Chinese fans. These open up autonomously and simultaneously, and it happens about one hour after launch."

Lucy will use three science instruments to study the asteroids, including color and black-and-white cameras, a thermometer, and an infrared imaging spectrometer to determine the composition of the asteroids' surface materials. The spacecraft will communicate with Earth using its antenna, which also can be used to help determine the masses of the asteroids.

The instruments will enable the science team to search for satellites around these asteroids as well as craters on their surfaces, which can help determine their ages as well as the origin and evolution of the asteroids.

Lucy will fly by the asteroids at about 15,000 miles per hour, about four times slower than when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zipped by Pluto and the distant object Arrokoth, said Hal Weaver, principal investigator for Lucy's L'LORRI instrument at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Lucy will also be about 600 miles away from each asteroid during its flyby, as opposed to around 2,000 miles away from the Arrokoth flyby, which means the Trojan images will have four times better resolution.

Once the Lucy mission has finished, the team plans to propose an extended mission to explore more Trojans. The spacecraft will remain in a stable orbit that retraces the path of its exploration between Earth and Jupiter, and it won't have a chance of colliding with either for over 100,000 years. Eventually, if the orbit does grow unstable, it will likely head on a doomed mission to the sun or get kicked out of our solar system.

Above video: Closest alignment of Jupiter, Saturn in nearly 800 yearsRight before Christmas, the two largest planets in our solar system formed a "double planet," an incredible spectacle that hasn't happened in more than 800 years. Well, soon one more planet will be joining them for another rare celestial sight. This weekend, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury will form a triangle for the first time since 2015, according to EarthSky.Dubbed a "planetary trio" or a "triple conjunction," the three planets will appear close together just after sunset from Jan. 8 through Jan. 11. Tonight, Mercury will start to move closer to Saturn, which will appear below Jupiter. So when's the best date to see the triple conjunction? The tightest grouping of these planets will occur on Sunday. The best way to catch the planetary trio is find a spot with an unobstructed view of the horizon, and look toward the direction of the sunset. It's important to start searching for the planets no later than 45 minutes after the sun sets because they will fall out of view beneath the horizon by nightfall, according to EarthSky. It might be difficult to spot the planets (especially Saturn, the dimmest of the three planets) while they're competing with the glow of the sunset. So it's a good idea to bring along binoculars or a telescope.Wondering what other celestial sights you can look forward to this year? Check out this complete list of full moon dates throughout 2021. Time to mark your calendars, skywatchers!

Related video above: Here’s Why Jupiter Never Became a StarA spacecraft orbiting Jupiter discovered an FM radio signal from Ganymede, one of the gas giant's moons. The discovery marks the first time a signal has been detected from Ganymede.Patrick Wiggins, a NASA Utah ambassador, cautioned it's probably not aliens, according to KDFW.“It’s not E.T.,” Wiggins said. “It’s more of a natural function.”The spacecraft, called Juno, was moving across a region of Jupiter were magnetic field lines can connect with the Ganymede moon. That's when Juno picked up the radio source. Juno was sent out to study how Jupiter formed and evolved over time.“Juno's primary goal is to reveal the story of Jupiter's formation and evolution. Using long-proven technologies on a spinning spacecraft placed in an elliptical polar orbit, Juno will observe Jupiter's gravity and magnetic fields, atmospheric dynamics and composition, and evolution,” according to NASA.It was electrons, not extra terrestrials, responsible for the radio emissions form the moon.Through a process called cyclotron maser instability, electrons oscillate at a lower rate than they spin which causes them to amplify radio waves rapidly. Though a significant discovery, the orbiting spacecraft was only able to pick up the radio emissions for just five seconds. Juno hurtled by at a blinding speed of 111,847 mph. That's fast enough to cross the entire United States coast to coast in just under two minutes.

JUPITER, Fla. — Thursday is National Rescue Dog Day. Six months ago to the day, a dog that was left in a dumpster at a Walmart in Ft. Pierce was dropped off by a rescuer at Furry Friends Adoption Clinic and Ranch in Jupiter. It was the start of the recovery process and another milestone was reached.

“Oh, she is so beautiful, she looks absolutely amazing,” said one of the vet techs who cared for a dog, now named Lola.

A reunion months in the making took place outside Furry Friends.

“Her name is Lola,” said Michele Jacobs, who adopted the dog. “We adopted her the weekend after Thanksgiving.”

Lola’s new mom, Michele, has a passion for rescue dogs and the true patience of a mother.

“When she came back to our house, she really struggled for the first three months,” she said. “I slept with her in another room, and she really she is attached to me, she struggled with men for probably three months.”

It’s a level of patience similar to that practiced by those who work at Furry Friends.

“When you have a starving dog like that, you have to gradually bring them back so we gave it the care we did,” said Pat Deshong, president of Furry Friends Adoption Clinic and Ranch. “Two hounds that were dumped into a dumpster by Walmart to die. They were literally skin and bones, skin and bones.”

Now, the hope is that this transformation will inspire others.

“I hope so, absolutely please adopt, please rescue these babies they are all so sweet and it’s not their fault,” said Jacobs.

“(It) inspires us that we are doing the right thing,” said Deshong, who explained that mission is rescue, rehab, re-home. “Especially so close to death. We didn’t know it was touch and go for a while. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Lola is now 20 pounds heavier than six months ago. The love for her is growing as well.

“She was so abused, and you can look at her and see all the scars on her,” said Jacobs. “She has parts of her ears missing and her tail is only half the size it should be, so we know she has been through a lot. She is the sweetest, smartest, precocious little teenager around.”

It just goes to show, the saying is true.

“All dogs are good dogs, yep and they wake up happy every single day,” said Jacobs.

This story was originally published by Tory Dunnan at WPTV.