Okay, all the talk about Jupiter got my curiosity up.

[usonian]

3000mm. f/8
Cross-posted to Weather Watchers

[msongs]

1. it is blazingly bright around sunrise, off to the west nt

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

3. Nice! I put my 60x spotting scope on a tripod and got it too! And it's moons we're so bright! yay

[burrowowl]

4. Nice shot!

[kentuck]

5. Is Jupiter getting closer to Earth?

Or is Earth getting closer to Jupiter?

If the latter, we could have a very cold winter.

(from an amateur astrologist)

[usonian]

6. They both orbit the sun, so it's a matter of

when they are both near each other or not.

I found this really quick. The outer planets have larger and slower orbits. The fun part is that the orbits are elliptical, not round.

http://www.astronoo.com/en/articles/positions-of-the-planets.html

Apparent size varies with distance, one to another.

The sun's heat on any spot on the earth varies less with distance than the inclination of the earth. More heat when tilted towards the sun than away.

More here.
http://www.astronoo.com/en/articles/obliquity-earth.html

You can see this because the sun seems to have a bigger path in the sky in summer than in winter. Would not be the case if the earth rotated at right angles to the sun.