macro skies

We had a youth camping event last night at the church. My son was the only youth there--and I thought I was going to be disappointed about that. But something very cool happened. John brought his telescope out to the big field behind the church and as the sun started setting, he said, "See that bright dot right there above the tree?" "yeah," I said. "That's Jupiter. Check it out."


So I peeked in the viewer and there it was. Jupiter. And four of it's moons. As he increased the magnification, the stripe in the northern hemisphere became visible and so did the movement of our planet.


The earth is moving, rotating, at about 1,000 mph (at the equator...probably faster the farther away you get from the equator..but I'm not sure about that). Add to that the fact that we're revolving around the sun (not sure of the speed) and suddenly it seems we're riding one of those tea cup rides from a carnival and somehow, managing not to puke!


So as the magnification increased, the speed of our rotation was more noticeable and the bright dot with the stripe and the four moons zipped across the viewer pretty quickly.


I'd never seen a planet through a telescope like that. It's pretty cool.