Jupiter gets struck again by another asteroid

hey fellas, check this out

I recently revived my childhood interest in astronomy and bought a really sweet lil' meade 127mm reflector telescope with an autostar suite (autotracking)

I work nights sometimes, so I bring it out. I show my co-workers the wonders of the heavens every chance we get when work slows down.
The place where I work suffers from light pollution, so all we can ever see are the planets, moon, and only the brightest stars.

I noticed that one of my co-workers has a really sharp eye. He is always the 1st one to find venus, then mars, then saturn as the sun goes down.

One night we were observing jupiter and it's 4 moons thru the telescope. I had my eye in the piece and my friend was just looking with the naked eye. all of a sudden he blurted out "Man, you know whats wierd...........I look at jupiter and I can SEE the moons. I just cracked a smile while keeping my eye in the lens so he wouldn't see my face. I was thinking his brain was playing tricks on him, projecting the image from his mind or something like that. I just told him I would love to have his 20/15 vision.

That was over a month ago.............

Now I can see the moons. My eyesight is not perfect anymore. With atronomy I have found out my left eye is not as strong as the right. When I look at jupiter with the naked eye it is all spiky, but when I close the left I can make out the moons. If I put on polarised sunglasses I can make them out perfectly (and that Idea in totally out the box cuz really, who wears sunglasses at night)

But here is the point. Since when are we suppose to be able to see jupiter's moons with the naked eye? when did that happen? I looked on stellarium and it says it will keep comming on in till sept 20th before it starts pulling away again. It will be 3.95 AU from us on that date.

I did a few searches to find out more about naked eye observations of jupiters 4 moons (it has more I know), and all I could find were old reports of "anectdotle evidence", and eyewitness testimony from a few centuries past. I also remember as a kid I saw jupiter in a 4 ft by 12 inch reflector, and it looked more like saturn does now in my scope. I don't want to speculate further cuz I might already sound like an idiot so sry if I do.

I live on the gulf of mexico in the central time zone. Jupiter rises in the east at 2130 and tracks high across the southern sky till it sets in the west. It is the brightest thing in the sky after the moon. I asked my friend the other day how jupiter looks now, and he says it looks like saturn sometimes and at other times it looks like it has a tail..........He is observing the moons rotate around, making the overall naked eye image morph from a winged planet to a planet with a tail.

I wonder how it will look in just a few more weeks?



[edit on 2-9-2010 by Khaaaaaan!!]

OK, found a better way to do this................

look thru a paper towel roll or anything that makes a long tube to kill any light pollution and you can see the moons clearly

now to see it even better, put on your polarized sunglasses then look thru the tube.............do you see them?

I realise that by using the glasses and the tube, it no longer is true naked eye observations of jupiter, but still

go...............go outside and see for yourself, it's freaky.