What a pleasant summer-evening surprise.<\/p>\n
Last night, I stepped out on the back porch to check something before bed, and lo and behold, there to greet my eye was a remarkably beautiful\u00a0 celestial event! A gorgeous half-moon was setting in the southwestern sky, with a brilliant Jupiter glowing to the lower right. It was very pretty.<\/p>\n
Though I was about to go to bed, I dashed back in to get my binoculars and observe the moons of Jupiter. Though the mighty, gas-giant has thousand of moons, I would be observing the ones that are most easily visible from earth: The Galilean moons<\/a>. These four moons, Callisto<\/a>, Europa<\/a>, Ganymede<\/a> and Io<\/a>, were first observed by Galileo<\/a> , circa 1610, and his observation\u00a0 gave him the revolutionary idea ( pun intended) that the earth went round the sun.<\/p>\n As for my observation, I enjoy observing the Galilean moons because they change position every night<\/a> just like they did for Galileo.<\/p>\n And I can tell people I saw five moons last night!<\/p>\n copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a pleasant summer-evening surprise. Last night, I stepped out on the back porch to check something before bed, and lo and behold, there to greet my eye was a remarkably beautiful\u00a0 celestial event! A gorgeous half-moon was setting in … Continue reading