Tonight was the
Harvest Moon, not only was the moon supposed to be extra pretty (it looked like a normal full moon to me), but Jupiter was supposed to be the 2nd brightest object in the sky. :) I took the telescope out and thought I'd try to get a close-up of the moon, and was able to also get a close-up of Jupiter too. :D I decided to let you all imagine what the moon looked like, since we've all seen Harvest Moons before, but show you the shots I got of Jupiter. I couldn't settle for one photo so here are three (click the image to see it bigger). The first one is taken with my 300mm zoom lens. I didn't realize the moons could be seen until I processed the photo on my computer. The second and third shots were through the telescope. I had to set the ISO at 1600 to get the shot fast enough so that it wasn't just a steak. I had my camera on a tripod looking into the eye piece. It's not easy to get them lined up, especially when trying to view a moving object. It moves faster than you think. :) In the middle shot you can see the moons really well. From lower left to upper right Jupiter's moons are; Ganymede, Io, Callisto and Europa. The big white one in the middle is Jupiter. :) The third shot was a 30 second exposure. So now you know how far Jupiter moves in 30 seconds. :) You can sort of see the streaks from the moons, and any white dots that you see are artifacts from the camera sensor.
Photo details: Canon EOS Digital Rebel, Exposure time 1/ sec, Aperture f/, ISO , Focal Length .0 mm.
