Jupiter - and its moons
 

Jupiter is very visible in the night sky during the next few weeks. If you look toward the south it will be the brightest object in the sky. And, with a good pair of bionoculars or a small telescope, sever moons are visible! Tonight they should be in a straight horizontal line with Jupiter.

For the next couple days, you should be able to see the 4 "Galilean moons" (so named becuse they were first described by Galileo :rolleyes: ) - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They are spectacular!

I only know this, LOL, because a science professor friend invited several of us to her home where she has a large telescope set up in her back yard. Oh my gosh, it was phenomenal looking at all of them! E

Even with binoculars you can get a sweet view!

Yes, Jupiter is very bright these days! Wish I had a telescope to see the moons.

I agree its spectacular, I went up to my brothers a few weeks ago and saw it through his telescope. But the best part of the night was when his 3yo daughter looked at the moon, her response was just gorgeous, she was so excited that the moon was soooo big.

Yes it is spectacular! I think you'd have to have a pretty darned good pair of binoculars to see the moons though.

We also took a look at the binary star in the handle of the Big Dipper. I had no idea...the 2nd star from the end of the handle is actually 2 stars caught in each other's orbit. Seeing those up close was phenomenal!

I must say, me poor pea brain got blown away seeing the stars farther out that aren't visible with the naked eye.

All the while she's giving me the statistics about how fast we are moving and mentioned that if the earth decided to stop on its axis we'd all be flung off by the sudden stop, ROFL! Like at the equator it's over 1,000 mph.

Laudy...

:thud:

that is SO cool ... I love checking out the sky and stars! used them when we crossed the Pacific Ocean (I was driving the ship in the Army) ... and got to see the 'Southern Cross' ... it looked like headlights RIGHT THERE!! pretty cool ...