You can find this picture of Jupiter and its four largest moons - which were discovered by Galileo when he got a telescope for Christmas* - over at the Planetary Society site. It is the sort of image that Mr Galilei might have seen himself, way back in January, 1610. But there is something remarkable about this crude image. It was taken by a camera on a space probe in the vicinity Mars. The Rosetta spacecraft took some images of the Red Planet, too, which it had just passed on its way to rendezvous with a comet.
Truly this is an age of wonders. If the human race, or something like it, survives for a few hundred years more, I suspect the achievements of spacecraft like Rosetta will figure at least as highly as any earthbound event.
*This statement is not historically accurate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment