Game Boy Camera Takes Over Mount Wilson’s Giant Observatory Telescope, Captures Jupiter and the Moon

Chris Graue has a track record of pairing forgotten game hardware with actual camera gear. A Super Nintendo on a tripod came first. His latest project pushed the idea much harder by bolting a 1998 Game Boy Camera onto the 60-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. The camera carries a sensor that records only 128 pixels across and four shades of gray. Those numbers sound impossible for anything beyond a toy, yet the rig delivered a clear view of Jupiter that shows the planet’s banded atmosphere and the clean curve of its edge.

The Game Boy Camera, which was released in 1998, sold rather well, but most people dismissed it as a cute little novelty that wasn’t very practical. Fast forward to the present, and the item has gained a devoted following among a group of admirers who see the camera’s limitations as part of its appeal. Graue took this idea and ran with the same severe constraints, rather than attempting to fight or work around them. The Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles has a distinguished history of astronomical research. That is where the telescopes that documented the scale and form of the Milky Way and contributed to other accomplishments that fundamentally altered our view of the universe were located. Graue got the idea to use one of these vintage instruments as a larger lens for his little, plastic Game Boy Camera.

Custom adapters were created to make the connection possible. UltiArjan made a 3D printed shell that adds a regular C-mount thread to the Game Boy Camera, which is a very useful small piece of kit. Graue and his friend Drew then created a sliding mount that fits into a 1.25-inch eyepiece port before adding a few extra rings to increase its size until it clamps onto the telescope’s four-inch opening. When all of these pieces are combined, the statistics become quite extreme. The 60-inch telescope has a focal length of around 24,384 millimeters, but when the Game Boy Camera is included, the effective length jumps to 730,000. At that scale, even the smallest wobble or tracking inaccuracy becomes visible in the frame.


The group’s first goal was to capture a shot of the Moon. Unfortunately, it’s around 240,000 miles away and too large for the setup’s limited little patch of sky. The image simply would not frame or maintain focus within the Game Boy Camera’s small sensor. They switched to Jupiter instead. It’s far enough away that the planet fits perfectly inside the camera’s narrow field of view. Even though the image is extremely pixelated and only in greyscale, the planet’s cloud bands show up as clear horizontal stripes. The disk’s sharp outer border stands out against the sky. Graue captured a single image of it and then printed it using the first Game Boy thermal printer.


The printed output features the classic Nintendo Game Boy logo at the bottom. The same little Game Boy Camera that captured it is now mounted on the big steel framework inside the observatory dome, right next to all of the heavy industrial telescope apparatus. A colorful play piece of plastic sitting among all of this serious, high-tech hardware captures the essence of the entire endeavor in a single glance.
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