By Anthony Danese, MHS physics teacher
More than a dozen students from Deb Spencer’s and Anthony Danese’s astronomy and physics classes at Morristown High School, and some friends and family, gathered behind the school to observe the night sky on Tuesday.
The highlights of the evening were the observations of the Moon’s craters and maria, Jupiter and its four Galilean moons, and the planet Venus, which is currently in its gibbous phase.
These observations were first made telescopically by Galileo more than 400 years ago and provided critical evidence for our heliocentric model of the solar system.
Abby Carroll, an AP Physics student, took photos of the Moon and Jupiter through the telescope using her smartphone.
The four Galilean Moons can be seen as bright dots in her photo of Jupiter. Moving outward from Jupiter (bright disk), the moons are Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto.
Love this kind of story. Thank you students for proving the naysayers about today’s generation wrong.