I’ve been playing with Stellarium, an open source planetarium application.
It’s not as full featured as many other planetarium applications like The Sky or
Starry Night. But it’s got some neat features, it’s easy to use and you can’t beat the price (free, as in beer).
You can download Stellarium here.
The universe just got a whole lot smaller, or larger depending on how you look at it.
According to National Geographic,
scientists at the University of Toronto have captured infrared images of a so-called normal star and its potential orbiter using a ground-based telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
We are living in historic times folks.
Jupiter
Tonite, right after sunset, look directly south, about 1/3 of the way up from the horizon. That bright star you’ll see is Jupiter, the King of Planets.
For the next few weeks, Jupiter is dominating the night sky. It’s currently in the constellation Sagittarius, coincidentally one of the most deep-sky rich constellations visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
In 1609, Galileo first viewed Jupiter through a telescope and saw right away the four Galilean Moons: Io, Calisto, Ganymede and Europa.
Over the course of several nights, the moons can be viewed orbiting around Jupiter - it was this discovery by Galileo that led to the downfall of the geocentric world view - that everything revolved around the Earth. This was the birth of the modern world-view, in short - the birth of modernity.
With binoculars, you can clearly make out Jupiter as a disk and see the moons. With a small telescope you can see the Jovian system. In my telescope I can see at least two equitorial bands and on a very clear night I can make out even greater details on the surface of Jupiter.