Very peaceful day.. beautiful outside.. cold and clear.. got me motivated to get out my telescope to see if I could get a shot of Jupiter which is bright in the sky now..   it’s really amazing how big Jupiter’s moons appear even under low magnification. I was telling Gabe at dinner about how folks used to use the transits of Janitors moons as a universal time reference which allowed them to calculate Longitude.The transit times were carefully recorded and a fixed place (ie. Greenwich England) and published in books called Ephimeris.. Someone in a different part of the world could use those transit times., star positions  and a little geometry to figure out how how far east or west they were from the original measurment point. That’s the best folks had until good accurate clocks became available in the late 18th century.. Dava Sobel wrote a great book about it called ‘Longitude’ ..Check it out..

Jupiter looked great through my scope.. unfortunately this is the best picture I could grab by putting my blogging camera up to the eyepiece.. .. still.. ti’s clear enough to see three of the four ‘Gallelian’ moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.. .. I’m not certain. but  by their orbits , I think Ganymeade is the one missing here.. it must be behind the planet.

Our moon was unsurprisingly easier to spot 🙂  .. You can tell by the fuzzy outlines here that the air wasn’t that stable tonight.. but I always like looking at the moon !

 

I can tell by the positions of the moon that  it was dinner time … Diane made homemade chille rellenos.. using Kale she pulled fromthe garden..

It’s funny how kale lasts into the winter.. (note the snow !)

OK.. time for bed.. more tomorrow.

nite all, nite sam

-me