I decided that, despite my claims in a recent post, I might have an optical instrument in the house with more power than those binoculars. I charged up the Sony handicam and set it up on its tripod. A quick look at Kstars gave the rough coordinates of Jupiter in the sky, and I headed out into the back walk of our cottage.
I setup the handicam on the loose gravel and aimed it up at the *very* bright speck in the night sky that is Jupiter. A few taps on the focus and zoom and I grabbed some video of Jupiter transiting the sky as the earth rotates. I fired up Kino on the ole Linux box and grabbed the DV off the camera, then snapped the still below:
“Fuzzy image of Jupiter taken with a Sony Handicam”:img:wp-content/uploads/jupiter-handicam.jpg
What’s neat is that there is a fuzzy little object just below and to the left of Jupiter, which *might* be a moon. I wish I could confirm that!
