Jupiter

Nikon D90, 70-300mm

Jupiter and four of its moons.

You can see the moons perfectly well with a decent pair of binoculars. It's pretty amazing, really. Jupiter is the brightest thing in the sky right now (not counting the sun and moon, obviously), so it's pretty easy to find, if you want to take a look.

I don't think any kind of lens is going to let you see Voyager 1, however.

Next night:

Nikon D90, 70-300mm

They moved!

7 thoughts on “Jupiter

  1. cleek

    yep.

    300mm is pretty long for a 35mm camera, but it’s minuscule for a modern telescope. luckily, it’s (just) long enough.

    it’s also a hugely zoomed-in section of the camera’s image. Jupiter itself is probably less that 20 pixels wide, on the original.

    i’m going to try again tonight; see what’s moved where, and maybe get better colors.

  2. Cris

    Stellarium tells me that Callisto will be trying to hide behind Jupiter this evening, so you might get only 3 apparent moons.

  3. The Modesto Kid

    Speaking of Callisto, was it you that linked to the wacky picture of Newt Gingrich’s wife a week or two back? She made me want there to be a pulp sci-fi novel called “Eyes Like Callisto”.

  4. Cris

    Look at those moons move! It really amazes me how quickly they orbit around that big sucker. Io does it 42 hours — to borrow from Winston Wolfe, that’s real fucking fast.

Comments are closed.