Click it to embiggen. It’s not hard to get nice shots of the Moon, even during the day, though to get one this nice it does take a bit of experience and work. But it’s not all that technically challenging, and since it’s IYA 2009 anyway, I encourage everyone to give it a try. The Moon is bright and easy to spot, making it the obvious target for a beginning attempt at astrophotography. But you’ll need a telephoto; the Moon is smaller in photographs than you might expect. Experiment! Play around! And if you get nice results, link to ‘em in the comments. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Also, the fantabulous Pamela Gay has two Galileoscopes for auction on Ebay with the boxes autographed by some celebrities at Dragon*Con: one is signed by the cast of Battlestar Galactica and Felicia Day, and the other by the cast of Ghost Hunters International. I know, I know, but as Pamela points out, the goal here is to get everyone to look at the sky, and maybe, just maybe, if someone who’s a fan of the latter gets a ’scope, they’ll observe the dark sky and turn away from the dark side.

Yay! There were some shipping problems, and it took longer than expected (they arrived about a month ago but I’ve been too busy to write up this post). But still, very cool. I ordered three; one for my daughter and me, one to give away on the blog (coming soon), and one that was an anonymous gift to some place that could use a telescope to show kids the wonder of the skies.

It comes packed pretty well, and all the pieces were there. The lenses are glass — very nice! — and the plastic in the tube is solid and fits together pretty well. I will say that the instructions are not terribly clear; if you get a ’scope, go to the Universe Awareness for Young Children site, which has language neutral instructions that make assembly a snap.

Once I opened that page, assembly took only a few minutes. When it was done, I mounted it on my sturdy tripod (I highly recommend using one) and took it outside for a spin.

As expected, with the low power eyepiece it’s not too hard to use. The difficulty for beginners is that the telescope employs a lens, which means images are reversed and upside-down, so be prepared for that! It takes getting used to, but most folks do get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Star images are pretty crisp. That means the lenses are decent quality and aligned well. I tried for Saturn, but couldn’t see the rings. The planet is clearly a disk, but the rings are almost edge-on and difficult to discern. Plus, Saturn is about as far away as it can get right now, so it’s a poor target to choose. It was the only object up at twilight, though, which is why I tried.

Later, Jupiter rose above our treeline, and the good news is it gets higher every night for a while now. Through low power the planet is easily resolved as a disk, and the four big moons were a piece of cake to spot. I could even just barely make out two or three of the cloud stripes on Jupiter.

I found the higher-power eyepiece almost impossible to use, which I actually expected — it’s hard enough in much more expensive telescopes. Higher power means smaller field of view, so finding objects is tough. Focusing is hard as well, since the target is hard to keep centered. I suggest finding the best focus with both eyepieces and then marking the slider tubes with a white or silver marker that you can see in the dark. That way you can pre-focus.

All in all the Galileoscope is a good piece of equipment. It’s not hard to assemble, and if you have a tripod and some measure of patience it will allow you view large bright objects. You won’t go galaxy hopping with it, and the inverted view makes bird-spotting hard too. But it serves the purpose it was designed to do: get astronomy in the hands of people everywhere for a very low price.

Check out this digital drawing of Saturn:

Gorgeous, isn’t it? Drawn by artist Gregory Siegburg, it’s part of a new project called Experience the Planets, started by a talented group of artists who want to create and collect beautiful artwork of the planets so that people can get a view of them that — so far — are difficult to obtain or cannot be achieved with our probes.

The pictures they have there are incredible, and available for download as wallpaper, too. My only complaint is that they don’t have enough! But they’re looking for more artists, so if you have the talent, you might want to contact them. They’re supported by the International Year of Astronomy, too! So this is the real thing.

Go there and check out their work. It’s beautiful.

Now here’s the thing: production is not so simple for these telescopes, and the folks making them want to continue to do so. But unless they get a bunch of orders right away production will stop. They need orders by the end of May, which means that if you’re thinking of getting one or more — and at $15 each (plus shipping) it’s cheap to do so — then please send in your order now! Don’t wait; if you do it may be too late. At the very least the price will go up, and at worst they won’t be able to make any more.

I bought three: one for my daughter (and, to be honest, me), one for her school, and one to give away on the blog. I’ll do that last bit once they get here — but don’t rely on winning it; I expect to get about 1000 entries for it.

So stop reading this blog and go buy a ’scope or three. Give ‘em to folks who can’t afford ‘em, donate one to a school, or simply designate your order to go to a faraway land where the kids need the inspiration and awe of seeing Jupiter’s moons, the phases of Venus, the mountains of our own Moon, or Saturn’s rings.

I became interested in astronomy at the age of five because I saw Saturn through a small telescope. Will you please help another child appreciate the wonder of astronomy? You never know where it will take them.

For example, telescopes all over the planet are observing the skies and webcasting it all live.

There are star parties all around the world; Popular Mechanics has an alphabetical list of the ones in the US.

Even space probes are in on it; the Cassini Saturn probe team posted their favorite Saturn images on their site in honor of Galileo.

100 Hours was honored in an APOD image, too.

You can follow all this by going to the 100 Hours site, and get info as it happens on their Twitter feed, too. And don’t forget to classify those galaxies!