If you peak to the west during March in Texas you'll notice a bright star that doesn't seem to twinkle like the rest. That is because it is in fact not a star and instead one of our planetary neighbors Jupiter! At first glance Jupiter seems to be lonesome in the sky amongst the rest of the stars, but gaze through a set of binoculars or a telescope and you'll notice that Jupiter has a few other objects near it. Jupiter's moons along with the craters of our moon was discovered around the time when Galileo first aimed his telescope up into the heavens. It turned out these dark spots on the moon weren't seas as we originally thought, and Jupiter had moons of its own!
Galileos first telescope had a convex lens at the front of the tube and a concave one at the other end as an eyepiece. It is said that Galileo carved the lens himself as he built his own version of a refractor telescope that originated from a Dutch invention.
Todays modern telescope have come far, but rely on the same principal which is to bring in as much light as possible either by reflecting the light, bending it, or a combinations of both.
With these telescopes provided during the tours, we are able to peer into the past and view light from stars that has travelled millions of years to get to us.
The amazing thing about telescope is, you don't need anything fancy to get started. In fact, a pair of 7x50 binoculars can help us identify the moons of Jupiter and even start to see the haze of Orions nebula!
With our 10in Dobsonian reflector, we can easily maneuver and see the young stars within Orions Nebula and begin to see color and perhaps the giant red storm on Jupiter that has lasted at least 150 years.
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