alt.hn

7/10/2026 at 1:17:52 PM

Guy took Jupiter photo with Game Boy Camera, giant telescope, publishes tutorial

 https://www.engadget.com/2211886/guy-who-took-photo-of-jupiter-with-a-game-boy-camera-and-giant-telescope-publishes-diy-tutorial/

by thunderbong

7/13/2026 at 5:39:45 AM

Here's a link to the actual photo. https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2026/06/09-Jupiter.jpg

[replaced a Threads link for a better one]

by wxw

7/13/2026 at 5:58:55 AM

"Get the full app experience"

F%%k the closed web.

by zx8080

7/13/2026 at 6:05:29 AM

Ah 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.

by wxw

7/13/2026 at 11:47:47 AM

Thank you. From the posted article, it took me to a YouTube video, which mentioned a Popular Science article[0], which I found looking at the history in BlueSky… yet none of that had the actual photo. After all that running around, it’s quite underwhelming. I suppose the headline and the process is better/more interesting than the picture, and they knew it.

[0] https://www.popsci.com/science/game-boy-camera-jupiter/

by al_borland

7/13/2026 at 7:44:10 AM

That'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?

by voidUpdate

7/13/2026 at 9:07:02 AM

It 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)

by hadlock

7/13/2026 at 9:21:04 AM

I'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?

by voidUpdate

7/13/2026 at 9:38:48 AM

Sorry, but I had a game boy camera in 1998 and it was underwhelming back then too. I was in the third grade.

by sublinear

7/13/2026 at 9:48:01 AM

Yes, the lack of whelm in all cases is what makes it impressive that it worked at all in this case.

by jdiff

7/13/2026 at 5:49:47 AM

Not 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.

by Calvin02

7/10/2026 at 2:33:03 PM

Can I see the picture of Jupiter though? Seems like one of the 2 pictures this article would need

by canthonytucci

7/10/2026 at 3:23:25 PM

Yeah, surprising all this effort and no clean copy of the picture to be easily found. Pretty easy to get them off the GB camera now days.

by mmmlinux

7/13/2026 at 11:42:49 AM

Probably because it is a kind of autogenerated article betting it all on the clickbait title to generate ad dollars.

by greatgib

7/13/2026 at 7:00:00 AM

Having the colour of your links be very close to the default colour of links you've already clicked is an interesting style choice

by voidUpdate

7/13/2026 at 10:00:59 AM

I don't know why I was expecting to be amazed by the photo.

by stdatomic

7/13/2026 at 6:10:29 AM

Would 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.

by RagnarD

7/13/2026 at 10:45:24 AM

It'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-i...

by archi42

7/13/2026 at 8:48:47 AM

This is why the internet was born.

by mikedd

7/13/2026 at 9:03:32 AM

This is definitely news for hackers.

by ErroneousBosh

7/13/2026 at 8:40:40 AM

Blogspam article with more ads than content.

by Sharlin

7/13/2026 at 8:36:50 AM

Just 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...

by realaccfromPL

7/13/2026 at 8:37:39 AM

Musician and retro tech fan Chris Graue

by realaccfromPL

7/13/2026 at 10:07:06 AM

There's a headline character count budget!

by jagged-chisel

7/13/2026 at 5:58:01 AM

Where is the photo?

by zx8080

7/13/2026 at 6:39:16 AM

Read the other comments and you’ll find the answer you’re looking for.

by WalterGR

7/13/2026 at 12:57:07 PM

[dead]

by pineapplepizza6

7/13/2026 at 10:17:24 AM

[flagged]

by amelius

7/13/2026 at 10:59:07 AM

Do 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.)

by gus_massa

7/13/2026 at 12:17:54 PM

There's not much to blog about. You just take the camera sensor and place it in the focal plane of the lens.

by amelius

7/13/2026 at 2:48:46 PM

I 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.

by gus_massa

7/13/2026 at 3:14:05 PM

Even 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.

by amelius

7/13/2026 at 11:00:35 AM

Indeed, content performance is more important than camera performance here.

by HPsquared