And to start the ball rolling

I'm taking an astronomy class this semester. It all seems pretty interesting, although they haven't let me touch the big telescope yet. We're supposed to be keeping an eye on the stars, whenever weather permits. Last night I went out with a star map and camera in hand. I thought I might be able to take some long-exposure pictures of the night sky and analyze them back in my room. Well, it turns out my camera won't even do a one second exposure. Most of the pictures turned out pretty bad. The moon was the only interesting thing to photograph.

I was a little confused because there was something really bright next to the moon. My star map didn't help much. The star map indicated the position of the stars at about 8pm, and I was out around midnight. After a long time of straining at the map, I gave up at identifying the bright star. I went back to my car, snapped a few more pictures, and then headed back.

When I got in, I found that most of the pictures were, naturally, either boring or completely black. Something in the very last picture looked funny, however. That bright star next to the moon actually looked like a planet. That made no sense to me, since my calculations somehow put Saturn (the only big planet visible last night) high up in the sky, nowhere near the moon. After much investigating on the internet, however, I have determined that the spot I saw was Jupiter. I'm pretty impressed, especially since that picture was taken at a pitiful 3x optical zoom and only at 1/2 a second. Hey, that's something everyone's camera can handle! Tonight, if you go out late enough, you can see Jupiter also. At about midnight, the moon will just be rising in the southeast. If you look pretty much directly above the moon, you should see a bright spot. That's Jupiter all right. (If you go out before 10, however, it's still below the horizon).

Update: Ok, so I talked with my astronomy professor after class. He pretty much burst my bubble. I showed him the picture and he said, "Hmm, that just looks like some sort of blip in the sky." In retrospect, I guess Jupiter would have to be pretty huge to show up as that large in my picture. Well, so much for that.