I looked at the Jupiter and Saturn with a modest 14 inch telescope last week https://www.darkskyproject.co.nz/tours/crater-experience/
The two planets themselves, and the four large moons of Jupiter and of course the rings of Saturn were all very visible, and this kind of old school technology has been available for hundreds of years.
But basically I agree, Hubble and robot planetary exploration are awesome.
How times have changed that a 14" telescope is "modest" :) My first was a 50mm refractor, and I used a 5" Maksutov for the longest time before settling down with an 8" Dob. An 18" truss-tube Dob is in the works.
How good is the nighttime visibility in New Zealand given its a somewhat isolated island? Here is California I would have drive somewhere out far for it to be dark enough.
I live in a smallish city (200K to 500K population, depending on how you define the city bounds). I just stepped out (it's 11pm here) and looked up (it's not normally something I think about). It's pretty reasonable, you can definite see stars by the thousands, some of them very bright. The air here is very clear for city air. Out in the country it's definitely better though. The excursion I linked to was in a very isolated area, the Mackenzie Basin in Canterbury. The local authorities there have picked up this particular ball and are running with it. Recognising that they don't have much light pollution anyway, they have set about minimising what light pollution there is (eg street lighting points down, in general they try to avoid unnecessarily leaking light up). It does make for a genuinely impressive sky on a clear night. The excursion was great. The bus takes you to a very isolated spot, and they give you plenty of dark time to get your night vision working well. Recommended. The youngsters who were acting as tour guides were both from the Northern Hemisphere and they made a point of talking up the Southern sky, saying in general it is more interesting. I don't know much about astronomy and can't judge, but they made a good case. I had no idea that Alpha Centauri is only visible in this hemisphere for example. Maybe astronomy would be a good hobby. It "feels" more profound than chess, C++ programming, and the intersection of the two :- )
This is a good month to watch Jupiter from the northern hemisphere. I was able to get a good view of the four moons using a binocular, fern with a lot of light pollution.
If you have a DSLR or similar camera (the lens/objective that comes with DSLRs is usually good enough) and a tripod, you can even photograph moons (plural!) of Jupiter yourself!
To avoid disappointments, I must set expectations correctly, though: they will be no more than a few tiny white dots next to a brighter dot (Jupiter itself) but either way: you will have photographed moons of a different planet all by yourself!
Edit: a few tips if you would like to try: make sure to use a tripod, as holding the camera is not going to work. A delayed release or remote release helps a lot because tiny movements of the camera while pressing the release will show in the image. Don't choose the exposure time too long as this will make Earth's rotation visible. The results are not going to be great but knowing that these are actual moons, hundreds of millions of kilometers away, will be a nice thing anyways.
For the past few hundred years until recently, we've been seeing bright and fuzzy dots. There's a difference between that, and ~640000 square pixels worth of details we see in the article.
I think about this a lot. We are the first people in human history to see the planets up close, so to speak.
For thousands of years, humans stared up at the sky and watched these luminous dots change position over time. They made up stories about them, tracked them, designed instruments to turn these blurry, luminous dots into slightly-less-blurry luminous dots.
But in this long human journey of thousands of years, we are the first generation to actually see these dots of light as the worlds they are. Us. You and me. So many thousands of years of ancient dreaming and wondering, going all the way back to our hominid ancestors, gazing at the night sky in wordless wonder.
And we, our generation of humans, are the culmination of this journey of imagination.
What they could only imagine, we know. For the first time in history, in my lifetime, we've visited every planet in the solar system. Any planet you see in the sky? We have photos of it. We've mapped its surface, or visited it directly. You want to know what sunset on Mars looks like? You don't have to guess.
We take this all for granted. I don't think we even appreciate the legacy we inherited. It feels like there should be a Planet Day, where we all celebrate the knowing. Where we symbolically link hands with our ancestors across time, with everyone who ever squinted up at all the little sparkles on the big black ocean and wished they knew what they were.
A day when everyone looks at at least one photograph from every celestial body we've seen, and appreciates the gift we've been given. And then maybe looks at the best photos we have of exoplanets, and realizes that we are in the same position today that our hominid ancestors were, wondering what these places will someday turn out to be, and who we will be when we finally know them.
This would be beautiful, but we need to be able to see the night sky first. Having moved to a large city from a tiny one, no one notices/even cares to look up here. there isnt much to see, I think that makes it meaningless to those who havent stared at a full clear night sky, no light pollution for miles. I'm jealous even with all the comforts you get here, you can't see that image our ancestors got to stare at almost every night(cloud factor).
These images are amazing, but I do feel that we as a society just sort of take them for granted now. However, I would highly recommend finding a local star party in your area. There is nothing like putting your eyeball on a telescope and seeing things for yourself. Yes, it will not be nearly as detailed as NASA images, but it will still impress.
For all of those made up stories you mentioned, I shed a tear every time I hear modern day things like flat earthers. We still have not gotten away from made up stories.
> You want to know what sunset on Mars looks like? You don't have to guess.
Sadly, people on the west coast have seen it in person.
I think we've had really good views of Jupiter for awhile. The Great Red Spot was identified over 300 years ago and tracked consistently for over 100 years. But Jupiter is huge so it's fairly easy to see in relatively good detail.
