Last night we popped outside and happened to notice a very bright object close to the moon. It increased in size when viewed through binoculars, so we concluded that it was probably a planet. A quick check on the Internet revealed that this was indeed correct, and that the planet in question was Jupiter. The sky was at this point fairly cloud-free and so we thought it would be worth our while to get the telescope out. It had been a long time since I'd looked at anything through the scope and so I was filled with child-like excitement when I got my first close-up peek. It got even better when we switched to an eyepiece offering higher magnification, and after a bit of work fine-tuning the focus we were able to make out two of the red bands wrapped around the planet's girth, and possibly one of its moons.
It is easy to forget that the rest of the universe exists when we are trapped here on Earth, absorbed in the minutiae of our mundane terrestrial lives, unable to even see many of the stars due to the dirty brown haze emanating from our cities. When we do take the time to look up it is difficult to absorb the reality of what we see: how can there be so many stars, how can they be so far away, how many millennia old can the light hitting our eyes right now really be? Actually seeing a planet for yourself, and it looking vaguely like the object you've seen in countless pictures brings home the fact that however incomprehensible the universe may be to our Earth-shackled minds, it is indisputably real. All you need to do is look. And when you do it is a wonderful experience.
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