Sharing my views of Jupiter and moons.

[cj Brown]

I'm fairly new to astronomy and don't claim to know a great deal about it but I love just looking through my scope at the skies. Recently I was working on an overnight shift with a long break in the small hours.

I decided that this would be a great opportunity to look at Jupiter.

I set up my scope, a William Optics Megrez 90, on the works grounds and waited for it to cool down. This was in West London and the skyglow is pretty awful but there was Jupiter bright and clear.

I could see two bands and four moons clearly at 124x magnification through a 5mm Nagler, I was amazed, it's only the third time seeing this but it was by far the clearest view I'd had.

It was then that I realised there was someone standing next to me, it was someone from a different department and was wondering what I was looking at.

I pointed to the sky and said "see that bright star up there"

I then unleashed my slightly altered Ben Kinobe Star Wars Quote:

"that's no Star" - sorry, couldn't resist it.

I then directed him to the eyepiece.

"wow" he said, and stood looking for a long time in silence.

I then pointed out that the four bright dots were moons, this was met with another "wow"

Over the next hour and a half I showed about twenty people who passed by, they were all amazed. I got less viewing time than I had planned and had to point out politely that this was NOT astrology more than once.

I'm glad that I got to share the view, it's something everyone should see at least once.

cj

[Codz]

Jupiter is always a great target. One of the few "Light pollution proof" objects.

[Connortron]

I've just seen it for the first time and can't believeits been up there all this time visible to the naked eye bit I never bothered to look at it!

[faulksy]

I've just seen it for the first time and can't believeits been up there all this time visible to the naked eye bit I never bothered to look at it!

you and millions of others as well:)

[che guevara]

I've just seen it for the first time and can't believeits been up there all this time visible to the naked eye bit I never bothered to look at it!

Its really special, amazing in fact.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

Great, even Bill from human resources beat me to it.