Jupiter?

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
So I’m watching NASCAR coverage on TV the other day. When they come in and out of commercial breaks, they will often spend a couple of seconds showing us the view from one of the many TV cameras, usually of something they figure will be interesting, maybe a fan doing something silly. Well, coming from one commercial break, they showed what I first assumed was a shot of The Moon, but there was something wrong. Usually if they show the moon, you can see the craters and such. This was a white disk, with a star visible off to one side. This was also unusual, because you can never see stars when the moon is in the field. Of course it wasn’t the moon, it was Jupiter! And that “star” was one of Jupiter’s moons! Imagine that. Those TV cameras make pretty darned good telescopes!
 
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Indeed. :) Did not see it myself, though professional television cameras can exceed 100x magnification these days, plenty enough for some impressive zoom-ins along with the adequate apertures to make it worthwhile. Even a good pair of 8x40 binoculars are easily able to resolve Jupiter reasonably well along with as many as 4 of it's moons (when they aren't transiting or being occulted). Had heard years ago that NASA has tracking cameras that can easily resolve a bowling ball @ 160 kms. That's pretty tight.

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You can see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter with a good 10 X 50 pait of binoculars tripod mounted to steady it. Those cameras have the capacity to go to around 15X. What make them really superior is the aperture of their lens, very big, so it gathers more light than even the binoculars. The amount of light gathered as opposed to that of the human eye is truly the mark of a good telescope or camera, more so than the power of magnification.

Caz
 
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