growing baby

Today, while returning from my grandmother’s place with Mateo (we went over for a visit), Mateo got a decent look at the night sky for probably the first time in a long while. We rarely are out walking when the sun is down, and with the time change this past weekend we were out much later than usual.

The whole way back, Mateo was fascinated with the night sky. He kept pointing at the sky — at the full moon, and at Jupiter in particular — and going “ooh!”. For reference, Jupiter is the brightest object in the night sky right now, second only to the Moon (possibly to Venus, too, but it only comes out in the morning during sunrise and isn’t really visible).

This was really endearing to me, since I’ve spent at least two whole hours over the last couple of weeks out on the street with a telescope, looking at Jupiter. I’ve used my (relatively dinky) telescope sparingly in the last decade of owning it, but recently took it out having seen a bright object in the sky and suspecting its jupiterness. Instead of just a clearer view of the same old dot in the sky (the usual consequence of looking at a star, which is too far to really be enlarged), here I saw something different. Jupiter was not just a point — it was clearly a circle. And a circle with at least some bands of reddish color to it, to boot. And not only was it there alone, but it was accompanied by four little dots: its satellites. I was blown away by the belated discovery that my telescope is actually good for something, and basically spent good chunks of an hour in the following few days staring at Jupiter some more, and showing it off to others.

So for Mateo to see Jupiter — in his own, not-quite-11-month way — is really exciting for me. I hope he ends up more serious about astronomy. And I definitely share his “ooh” sentiment about Jupiter.