October 23, 2009
You are a way for the cosmos to know itself, Carl Sagan once said. On your birthday, the cosmos got to know itself a little better.
A Galilean Night
Birthday · October 23, 2009
A little universe, just for you
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APOD published October 23, 2009. Credit: Jens Hackmann. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Driving along on a summer evening, near the small town of Weikersheim in southern Germany, photographer Jens Hackmann had to stop. He couldn't resist pointing his camera and telephoto lens at this lovely conjunction of a Full Moon and planet Jupiter looming near the steeple of a local church. Of course, 400 years ago, Galileo couldn't resist pointing his newly constructed telescope at these celestial beacons either. When he did, he found craters and mountains on the not-so-smooth lunar surface and discovered the large moons of Jupiter now known as the Galilean Moons. Jupiter's Galilean moons are just visible in this photo as tiny pinpricks of light very near the bright planet. Want to see the Moon and Jupiter better than Galileo? Look for local 2009 International Year of Astronomy activities and events during these next few Galilean Nights (October 22-24).
Image credit: Jens Hackmann