(Post #1 tonight, 1 of 3 pictures)
Tonight’s loss of sleep brought to me by finally getting off my butt, turning off Hulu, and the Ann Arbor district library’s Orion Starblast 4.5″ telescope.
First, I saw this, and went HOLY CARP! (Or OH MY GOD, I don’t remember which now)
And yes, I took this picture!
Two follow up comments I need to make:
1) When I looked at Jupiter the next night, the first / inner most moon of Jupiter in that picture was on the other side! All three I could see where lined up “to the right” of Jupiter. It was great to see, aesthetically, and almost mind boggling as I had not only seen moons of Jupiter, but now had seen one actually orbiting!!
2) These pictures are proof of why I still need an actual camera and not just rely on the camera on my cell phone. Yes, the new cell phone takes fantastic general pictures now, that rival those of the actual camera. But, it could not take these pictures. One, because the cell phone can not take night time / low light pictures well. Two, because the telescope eyepiece could not wrap around the cell phone’s camera lens. But the actual camera’s eyepiece fit almost perfectly into the telescope’s eyepiece, all I had to do was snug it up closed around the outside of the lens shaft! That blocked out whatever ambient light was around me in the dark of night, enough that the camera was able to see the pin points of light that I was seeing!