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Guy took Jupiter photo with Game Boy Camera, giant telescope, publishes tutorial
- mikedd 3mo agoThis is why the internet was born.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoThis is definitely news for hackers.
- canthonytucci 3mo agoCan I see the picture of Jupiter though? Seems like one of the 2 pictures this article would need
- wxw 3mo agoHere's a link to the actual photo. https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2026/06/09-Jupiter.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2026/06/09-Jupiter.jpg [replaced a Threads link for a better one]
- zx8080 3mo ago"Get the full app experience" F%%k the closed web.
- wxw 3mo agoAh yea, I shouldn't have linked to Threads (it was just the first result I found to see the full photo). I replaced the link with a better one.
- voidUpdate 3mo agoThat's... honestly kinda underwhelming. You can't even see any stripes, it's just a vague blob. I guess the contrast was just too much for the Gameboy camera?
- hadlock 3mo agoIt means a lot more if you held one of these in your hands new before you were old enough to drive (or, in my case, read about it in nintendo power, but only saw it behind the glass case at Target)
- voidUpdate 3mo agoI've used a gameboy camera recently. It took some lovely pictures once it was adjusted properly. I just suspect that there might have been problems with dynamic range etc that made it particularly difficult to take a picture of jupiter?
- sublinear 3mo agoSorry, but I had a game boy camera in 1998 and it was underwhelming back then too. I was in the third grade.
- jdiff 3mo agoYes, the lack of whelm in all cases is what makes it impressive that it worked at all in this case.
- Calvin02 3mo agoNot to diminish his accomplishment, he attached the game boy camera to a 60inch telescope at Mount Wilson. This is a cool project but the quality of the photo is what you’d expect from a gameboy camera. The headline seems to imply that he custom built a telescope for his gameboy.
- zx8080 3mo agoWhere is the photo?
- WalterGR 3mo agoRead the other comments and you’ll find the answer you’re looking for.
- RagnarD 3mo agoWould have been far more interesting to have an iPhone adapter, another very common device but with a worthwhile image sensor better justifying time on a massive telescope.
- archi42 3mo agoIt's a 100" telescope... from 1917. To summarize Wikipedia for you (my words, not a genai): While it was used by famous people like Hubble it isn't used for scientific work anymore. Some adaptics optics stuff happened in the 1990s, but I suppose that was just to test the system on a telescope that wasn't in active use anymore. In 2014 it "began its new life as the world's largest telescope dedicated to public use". So I'd say it's a good use as any ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Wilson_Observatory#100-inch_Hooker_telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Wilson_Observatory#100-i...
- HelloUsername 3mo agoRelated: "2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera" 04-jul-2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697456 55 comments
- voidUpdate 3mo agoHaving the colour of your links be very close to the default colour of links you've already clicked is an interesting style choice
- realaccfromPL 3mo agoJust name the "guy" in the title, how hard is that? I hate this so much. Idea and execution is so rad, just credit him properly, Engadget pls...
- realaccfromPL 3mo agoMusician and retro tech fan Chris Graue
- jagged-chisel 3mo agoThere's a headline character count budget!
- Sharlin 3mo agoBlogspam article with more ads than content.
- stdatomic 3mo agoI don't know why I was expecting to be amazed by the photo.
- amelius 3mo ago[flagged]
- gus_massa 3mo agoDo you have a blog post about it? It may be an interesting DIY post in HN in spite it may seem trivial to you. (Remember to include a few photos.)
- HPsquared 3mo agoIndeed, content performance is more important than camera performance here.
- amelius 3mo agoThere's not much to blog about. You just take the camera sensor and place it in the focal plane of the lens.
- gus_massa 3mo agoI took a few lab courses in the university (for Physics), it's never that easy. How do you keep it in place? A wood mount? A 3D printed piece? A metal support may be an overkill. Does it need screws for alignment? I guess 3, but I'm not sure if they are necessary. Can I buy the sensor alone or I have to remove a lens? Do you have a strong opinion about sensors? Like one for beginners and one for intermediate level. Wires? I still have nightmares about BNC wires that magically stop working. How much light isolation? Do I have to paint everything in black? (While using a microscope in a completely dark room to take photos, someone opened the door and the light ruined one or two of the slides, we notice that a few days later.) Each one here has a different set of expertise, so if you want to run the experiment and write a nice post with photos you can farm some karma. Otherwise, you can just comment that is also useful.
- amelius 3mo agoEven if you ignore all the issues you mentioned and physically mount the sensor with a bunch of blue tack in a dim environment you will be able to get a much better picture than the article. Next step would be 3d printing a case/mount. There really isn't much more to it. PS: you can buy a sensor with a USB2 cable attached to it, which works flawlessly in Linux.
- pineapplepizza6 3mo ago[dead]