Musician, director, and retro tech enthusiast Chris Graue proved that even a camera from an old game console can capture space. During a visit to the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, he took photos of Jupiter using a Nintendo Game Boy released in 1998. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
The camera was equipped with a special mount 3D-printed and attached to the famous 60-inch Hooker telescope. As a result, the tiny game camera effectively shot through a lens with an equivalent focal length of about 730,000 millimeters.
"Is this the largest lens on a Game Boy camera ever?" the enthusiast asked.
Initially, he tried to photograph the Moon, but it quickly turned out that for such a powerful telescope, the Moon was too close. Then the choice fell on Jupiter, which is about 714 million kilometers from Earth.
Despite the camera's modest capabilities, the images show the planet's outline and even its famous cloud bands. By modern standards, the image quality looks extremely primitive, but that was precisely the point of the experiment.
The Game Boy camera went on sale in 1998 and was considered more of an unusual accessory than a full-fledged camera. It could only take small black-and-white photos with very low resolution, but it became a cult device among retro tech fans.
"If you really want to, you can photograph Jupiter even with a Game Boy camera," the experiment's author joked after the shoot.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle reported that the James Webb Space Telescope helped scientists make one of the most unusual weather forecasts in the universe. On exoplanet WASP-121b, winds blow at speeds up to 18,000 km/h, and on the night side, precipitation of liquid metal, rubies, and sapphires may fall.