Thursday, August 6, 2009

As Advertised.

The Galileoscope came out again last night. It was not the best night for observing, however- nearly full moon washed out many objects, and there was a bit of cloud cover that cut the night short. Despite this, for the first time I found Jupiter! Sure enough, just as claimed, I was able to see 4-5 moons. It was incredible. I could not see the cloud bands, and the Jovian moons were just specs, but I was excited none the less.

As I admitted to a good friend of mine, astronomy is NOT a strong point of mine, so I had to use a nifty iPhone/iPod touch app to help me find things (Planets by Dana Peters - free and recommended.)

I am trying to jury rig a camera to the 'scope to get some images here, but it hasn't gone well so far. I'll try a few new things tonight.

2 comments:

  1. That would be neat to get a couple of photos, but I hear it is tough to get good quality.

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @telepathictroy:
    Very tough... Using a simple point-and-shoot digital, the camera didn't want to focus and the brightness of the moon washed out the picture quite a bit. I think I have one of the moon at 25x that's usable. It's not very exciting, however.

    I may have to wait until the moon is waning again. As for Jupiter, I'll retry that tonight. I hope the weather cooperates.

    ReplyDelete