Last Friday, I went outside to my driveway to take photos of the Moon with Saturn and Jupiter next to it in the night sky. And needless to say, the pictures did not disappoint! For the most part, that is. While I unsuccessfully tried to get an image of the Moon with its lunar surface not overexposed—and with both Saturn and Jupiter still visible (only Jupiter was bright enough to appear in those shots, as seen in the very last photo of this post)—I managed to capture two of Jupiter's four large Galilean satellites in my snapshots! And keep in mind that I was only using my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera (with a 70-300mm telephoto lens attached to it) three days ago. I don't own a telescope.
How do I know that those were Jupiter's moons and nothing else, you ask? Well, those two dots next to the Jovian planet were visible in all of the shots similar to the ones I posted in this Blog entry. Also, if these dots were light artifacts caused by my camera itself, then you would think that they would appear next to the Moon, Saturn and/or the nearby stars as well...which they didn't. And lastly, it would just so happen that two random stars appeared side-by-side right next to Jupiter in my images. I don't think so! So I'm confident that those pair of dots are a two-moon combo of Europa, Io, Ganymede or Callisto instead. I love astrophotography! Now I just need to buy an actual telescope... Happy Monday.
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