Wednesday 26 August 2009

400

Galileo's telescope is 400 years old today. Well, yesterday in Australia, but it is still the 25th somewhere in the world. Google's Doodle, the main Google logo, was even adapted for the day thus:

Yesterday we figured out how to use our replica Galileoscope properly, that is, in all its 50x power glory. The most we'd got out of it up to now was with 25x power. We can see Jupiter as a disk with a couple of very faint cloud bands visible now. I reckon it is amazing considering we're in the middle of Sydney with all that light pollution and last night was pretty hazy too. Awesomeness squared. I haven't been able to take any snapshots through the scope but other people have and if you click here you can see Jupiter pretty much how we see it except we can see the moons too.
There's a bunch more photos on Flickr here but I particularly like this one. And remember, they've all been shot through this US$15 telescope.

2 comments:

  1. 15 US. Maybe $18 Oz. I got two. The postage was the killer. About the same as the cost of the telescopes but still worth it. I think they jacked the price up to US$20 now. But it is about as much fun as I've had holding a long tube in the dark. ;-)

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