The first time I looked at Jupiter through a telescope was on a wintery night in the Adirondacks. Anticipating the (ultimately disappointing) return of Halley’s Comet, my grandfather had purchased a refracting telescope, or perhaps been given one for 

Christmas. The arm-long black and white tube was set up on the edge of the driveway of his house in Westport, NY, which gave pretty good night-sky. The pin-head sized white circle had three or four white pin-points aligned with its equator. The Galilean moons aren’t as visually arresting as they are conceptually bright. First seen more than four-hundred years ago, they helped convince Galileo that the earth was not the center of the universe. It had similar effects upon the psyche of my teenage self. 

Galileo’s initial telescope gave such a fuzzy image of Saturn that he recorded that the planet looked like it had “ears” instead of rings, a description for which I have always had a bit of a solipsistic soft spot. More than thirty years after viewing Jupiter, I got my first glimpse of Saturn through a telescope, at the  McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX, which gives amazing night-sky. The astronomy grad students manned the scopes for the guests and watched the cloud cover roll in. The view through the more expensive glass and thinner air let me see the rings as sharp ovals surrounding the dime-sized white circle. I could convince myself of seeing some variation in greys on the planet, but only because we all have such glorious pictures in our heads from Hubble and the fly-by satellites. 

Any photographer or astronomer can tell you, the view through a lens is a funny trade off. Gains in magnification are losses in field of view. The closer you concentrate upon a subject, the less you can see its surroundings. You lose the context. 

To focus on the pinpricks of Jupiter’s moons you must take your eyes from the uncles and cousins orbiting Gramps and the telescope, and the lights of the warm living room. And that face of earless Saturn, the old god who ate his children, pales in comparison with the wondrous smile of my wife as she looks up from the lens, having seen him. It is a cool night on an anniversary vacation, and we will drive home illuminated by the moon and the light from stars far more ancient than Galieo’s drawings, or Homer’s myths, or humanity’s memory.