The First Time I Saw Jupiter

Tonight I saw what was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I have ever seen in the night sky. With my understated little telescope I was able to see Jupiter and it's 4 Galilean moons. It was literally breathtaking.
About a week ago I discovered through reading, internet surfing, and my sweet planetarium software that Jupiter is one of the more interesting objects to observe in the night sky. It's the third brightest object out there (behind the Moon and Venus), which makes it easy to spot. The frustrating part is just waiting for all the pieces to fall in place... especially when you live in such a populated area with a lot of light pollution. You have to wait for good weather, for the moon to be out of the picture, and for the planet itself to rise at a semi-decent hour. So I was waiting about a week for all of this to take place at once. The Phillies happen to be on the west coast this week which makes staying up late a little bit easier. It is nice and warm tonight with almost no clouds, the moon is below the horizon and Jupiter is at 19 degrees or so by midnight. So I figured tonight's the night. It's nice that Jupiter is rising in the southeast because my porch points due east so it's an easy spot from there. The unfortunate part is that there are crazy yellow street lights all over the parking lot. The other unfortunate part is that I only have a table tripod for my telescope and no table to put it on. So I tried spotting it from my porch at first, just holding the scope. To continue in my misfortune, I lost the nut to screw on my finder scope a couple weeks ago, so I was trying to hold that too when I dropped it off the porch. Just the finder, not the telescope. You'd think I might be wise and quit there but no, just as I was dropping the finder, I had caught a glimpse of something. Was it Jupiter? Was it the haze from the street light? I didn't know but I was curious enough to find out. So I went back inside, loaded the telescope onto the sad little tripod and went downstairs thinking that I would put it on my car. After realizing that if I put it on the roof I would be bothered by yet another street light, I finally settled on the hood and held the finder in place and spotted what I thought might be Jupiter. For me, the finder scope has certainly not been an exact science, especially when I'm, in true ghetto fashion, holding it on by hand. This time was different though. I looked through my 10mm eyepiece which is the highest magnification I have and, without any adjustment, I immediately saw a big yellowish ball. I thought to myself that there is no possible way I'd be able to see Jupiter this close because I had checked out what 40x magnification would look like and this wasn't it. I thought maybe it was the light playing tricks with me. So I thought about it again and then adjusted the focus... it was very much out of focus. As I reeled it out, I realized what I was looking at and very suddenly saw a clear view of the planet with four moons all in a perfect line. I was so surprised I stepped back and thought to myself that it's not possible that I'm looking at something so far away, something that Galileo and Newton looked at hundreds of years ago, something that I had only ever read about in books and never seen with my own eyes. I looked again and, because it's me, I started to cry. I'm not sure why but I think because it was so beautiful. I kept looking again and again, almost not believing it would be there when I put my eye up to the telescope. Every time I looked again I had to readjust because both Jupiter and us are moving and that was an amazing thing to comprehend as well. To think of just our solar system on such a universal scale is awe-inspiring. The sudden realization of how small we all are was almost overwhelming. In the end though, it just makes the knowledge of how important we all are seem that much more significant. The beauty and majesty of something so huge simply took my breath away and I found myself just standing outside staring at it, not even through the telescope anymore.
Contact was and still is one of my favorite movies- Ellie, the main character in the movie says that she was given "a vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny and insignificant... and how rare and precious we all are." Of all the thoughts that flowed through my head the first time I saw Jupiter, that was the foremost one.
Well, that and the one that said ....I think I'm going to need a bigger telescope. :)