The Final Frontier

A few years ago, Heather got me a telescope for Christmas (or was it birthday?). I've seen a lot of neat stuff since getting it, though I must admit I don't use it near enough. I am fascinated by space and love nearly all the Star Trek shows and the like. Heather is the same way. The neatest experience with the telescope was probably me finding Saturn. That was so cool to be able to see the rings! Now keep in mind, these aren't fancy images like you see from the Hubble Telescope, but it was pretty cool. Looked a little something like this.

On Saturday night, I got the scope out again to check out a bright "star" in the sky. Turns out, it was Jupiter with 4 of its moons in plain sight! It looked a lot like this (though I could see two distinct horizontal lines on the planet, like this, though I'll admit it wasn't quite that clear). Heather checked it out with me and was equally impressed that all four moons line up in a straight line.

Livvi is showing definite similar signs of nerd-dom that her mother and I share. She loves to check out the stars, too. On Sunday night, we checked out Jupiter and the moon. The detail in the moon was incredible (even better than this). With the moon being nearly full and so bright, we about blinded ourselves! Joie took one look in the scope at Jupiter and had had enough. She started complaining about being scared of the dark. Perhaps a couple more years and we'll try it again.

Here is a picture I took tonight of the moon and Jupiter (without the telescope):


Hey, NASA! When you are done with Hubble, can you set it up in my backyard? Thanks!