Thursday, November 20, 2008

Amateur Astronomers Photograph Charon and Jupiter

This just blows my mind. “Amateur” astronomers capture Jupiter, Charon.

This is a picture of Pluto and it's moon Charon. It was taken by an amateur astronomer in Italy.

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"Mind you, Charon wasn’t even discovered until 1978 by a pro, using a 61 inch telescope! The image above was using a 14″ telescope, and is in fact much better than the discovery image. In 30 years of progress, a much smaller commercial telescope can do better than a professional setup could. Wow."

Here's a picture of Jupitor taken with an iPhone (and an 8" telescope)

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"The photo shows three of the four "Galilean" moons of Jupiter: Ganymede, Io, Europa, on the right, left to right. Callisto was not in the frame, and a faint star can be seen on the left of Jupiter. A few of Jupiter's cloud bands can be seen in the iPhone photo."

2 comments:

Richard said...

I have in fact taken pictures with my Treo through binoculars, though I haven't had the chance to do it through a telescope yet. I did take a picture of the transit of Venus in 2004 with a film camera through somebody else's telescope just holding it, not clamped on or anything. I got the pictures and a Kodak picture CD, does that count as digital?

Not as cool as an iPhone I guess.

Howard said...

No, it's just as a cool as an iPhone. Very freakin' nice.

And I'm an idiot for not taking a picture of Uranus with my iPhone last night.