Explanation:
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).
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