There is a comment on the site that the Galilean Moons of Jupiter can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies. I've known people who might have eyes good enough to do that, but for the rest of us even a modest pair of binoculars is enough. To me, it's one of the funnest things you can view in the northern hemisphere without getting out more serious equipment. (Another would be the Orion nebula. If you can set the exposure on your camera, you can even photograph it, although without tracking it'll be blurry.)
The Galilean moons are hard to see with the naked eye because the light from Jupiter is overwhelming. It is much easier if you use a distant object like a lightpost to just barely block out Jupiter.
Try viewing the jovian moons in winter when the atmoshpere is stable.
Try with binoculars first to see where the moons are then try to focus your eyes on the system without the binocs.
My eyes are terrible but I see those moons every winter
To see the red spot you will need a telescope.
To see it for more than a few seconds you will need an expensive telescope hopefully with auto tracking and the red spot must be in view
When I was a young boy a person showed me the rings of Saturn and it blew my mind.
I've since bought tools to help me see not only Saturn's rings but to study the Cassini divisions separating the rings
There are all kinds of cool stuff overhead
Wasn't Galileo first to observe them with his telescope or were they mentioned somewhere before? I assume back then the skies were darker and people probably had better eyes so if they are observable I would assume somebody would have mentioned them.
2. The moons aren't always visible (they're behind or crossing Jupiter).
3. The magnitude of the moons changes with the relative positions of Earth and Jupiter.
It's possible that Galileo was not the first to see them, but if you don't know what they are or how you managed to see them, you're probably not going to be able to get anyone else to believe you. The telescope allowed Galileo to track their movement and also to convince others, who could also look through a telescope and see them easily.
