The Kid has been very interested in astronomy off and on. He’s “on” right now, wants to be an astronaut engineer when he grows up (his definition of that varies), reads about space, watches videos about space. Right now, space is where it’s at.
Coincidentally, right now, Jupiter is visible to the naked eye. And with binoculars or a telescope, we can see some of its moons. (We were able to see two with binoculars and, on a clear night, four with a cheap telescope.)
After looking at Jupiter, of course we had to look at the moon. With our little telescope, we could see craters. It was pretty neat.
And the telescope has a lens that is good for taking pictures. I don’t know what makes it such, but I was able to snap the lead photo with my iPhone. Not bad!
We’ve gone out several nights. He’s very excited both to see what we’ve already seen and to look for new things. (On the night that it was somewhat cloudy, he reprimanded us for not buying a better telescope… not accepting that the problem was clouds, not equipment quality.) He’s “discovered” star clusters.
Not sure how long it will last, but for now, it’s pretty neat.
