It's cool and I think I'll order one, but they missed an opportunity in not offering a way to connect a digital camera to the scope, which would vastly increase awareness of what can be done with it. Of course, people will find ways to hack it together; but given the cost and size of digital camera technology I'm really surprised they're not offering a $79.99 imaging head with a USB cable hanging out back.
For sure. There's actually a pic on their web page (https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/content/frequently-asked-que...) made by just holding one up to the lens. Your biggest difficulty would be make a plate to mount both the scope and the camea. But I was thinking of something involving plastic tubing, glue, and one of those little USB microscope cameras.
yeah...I don't think you'd get very good fidelity just holding the camera up...maybe some sort of camera mount on the back end and make it modular where you could go back and forth between naked eye and taking pictures...I think I'm going to try this with a usb webcam and netbook first.
Well, it's not - that's why they include an achromatic lens element to reduce color fringing as well as an (optional) rectifying eyepiece. Microscope eyepiece cams aren't too pricey on eBay and might deliver better results than a consumer cam.
I can see a lot of cool little science fair projects with something like this, not all for astronomy either, eg mount 2 of them in parallel and build a stereoscopic analysis tool.
"This 51 times larger light gathering produces 4.27 magnitude steps in star brightness. Magnitude Steps = 5 * Log10(eye/telescope). So if you can see mag 6 stars with your unaided eyes, the telescope can get you down to magnitude 10.27, which places a great many more stars into your grasp."
That's not the point - the point of this scope is to emulate the scope Galileo had.
Anyway, the problem with tiny little reflecting scopes is that you need a table to set them up on. When you're out in a dark field looking at the stars, there's rarely a table handy.
Actually, this is not supposed to be a replica or simulation of Galileo's telescope. The scope in its default configurations has around 50% to 200% greater magnification than Galileo did, and it also uses newer optical techniques (achromatic doublets, internal baffles) to provide greater clarity than 17th-century instruments.
It is possible to assemble the Galileoscope in an alternate configuration that has the same magnification as the scope that Galileo used.
The real purpose of the Galileoscope is not to build a replica, but to build a cheap but high-quality telescope so that anyone (including children in schools that receive donated scopes) can see what Galileo saw: Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, and detailed views of our own moon.
Has anyone received theirs yet? I ordered two to give away as prizes for my club's big annual star party - but I'm more than a little worried they won't arrive in time.
Depends on what sort of knowledge you're trying to get. If you just want to be able to point out constellations, I would recommend The Stars by H. A. Rey (yes, the same guy who wrote Curious George). It's unique in that it displays the constellations in a manner that makes them actually look like what they're trying to represent (which ends up making them much easier to find). There's also some good descriptions of the mythology behind many of the constellations and some other interesting features in the sky that can be picked out with the naked eye or binoculars. There's also a section at the end that discusses the celestial sphere (how the sky changes during the seasons, the ecliptic, precession, etc.).
If you want something with more depth, I highly recommend Night Sky from St. Martin's Press. It's a little 300 page field guide that will give you a comprehensive introduction to the heavens and basic astronomy and provides you with enough data to go out observing with. The first quarter of the book is devoted to introducing the fundamentals of astronomy from the celestial sphere, to coordinate systems, to telescope designs, to the magnitude system, to variable stars, and stellar evolution. The rest of the book contains star charts, detailed descriptions of each of the constellations and interesting objects therein, and information on the planets. The only problem is that the book is a bit old, so the tables of data (sunset times, positions of the planets, etc.) are now out of date. Nevertheless, it's well worth buying.
If you would like a more serious introduction to astronomy and know some basic physics and calculus, you can do no better than to read Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie (affectionately known as BOB -- the Big Orange Book). It's about 1500 pages long and covers absolutely everything in astronomy. It's clear, comprehensive, and will likely tell you everything you need to know.
Don't forget to pack your android when you go on a stargazing field trip to escape the city lights. I relearned all the constellations I knew as a kid after playing with SkyMap for a week.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 67.5 ms ] threadStill, well done.
In any case, cheap cameras give very poor results, but if you want to try one you can always do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9khTIkwNmW8
I can see a lot of cool little science fair projects with something like this, not all for astronomy either, eg mount 2 of them in parallel and build a stereoscopic analysis tool.
I mean, yes, they opted for a modern achromatic lens - they also chose plastic instead of wood - but that doesn't change the basic point of the scope.
http://www.xomba.com/15_telescope_lets_you_see_more_than_gal...
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/27/the-celestron-firsts...
Anyway, the problem with tiny little reflecting scopes is that you need a table to set them up on. When you're out in a dark field looking at the stars, there's rarely a table handy.
It is possible to assemble the Galileoscope in an alternate configuration that has the same magnification as the scope that Galileo used.
The real purpose of the Galileoscope is not to build a replica, but to build a cheap but high-quality telescope so that anyone (including children in schools that receive donated scopes) can see what Galileo saw: Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, and detailed views of our own moon.
If you're referring to the Galileoscope, yeah, I know that.
To stabilize it very cheap.
If you want something with more depth, I highly recommend Night Sky from St. Martin's Press. It's a little 300 page field guide that will give you a comprehensive introduction to the heavens and basic astronomy and provides you with enough data to go out observing with. The first quarter of the book is devoted to introducing the fundamentals of astronomy from the celestial sphere, to coordinate systems, to telescope designs, to the magnitude system, to variable stars, and stellar evolution. The rest of the book contains star charts, detailed descriptions of each of the constellations and interesting objects therein, and information on the planets. The only problem is that the book is a bit old, so the tables of data (sunset times, positions of the planets, etc.) are now out of date. Nevertheless, it's well worth buying.
If you would like a more serious introduction to astronomy and know some basic physics and calculus, you can do no better than to read Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie (affectionately known as BOB -- the Big Orange Book). It's about 1500 pages long and covers absolutely everything in astronomy. It's clear, comprehensive, and will likely tell you everything you need to know.
http://www.google.com/sky/skymap.html