The Galileoscope is coming! This is a cornerstone project for the International Year of Astronomy (and, in the interest of disclosure, one I work on). The Galileoscope is a small, low cost, high optical quality telescope that anyone can build and recreate many of Galileo's famous observations. You can see craters on the Moon, the phases of Venus, the Galilean Moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.The telescope has a 50mm achromat lens with a 20mm eyepiece yielding a magnification of 25x and a nice big 1.5 degree field of view. A supplied 2x barlow lens can bump the magnification fo 50x. As an added bonus, you can use the Barlow lens as an eyepiece to construct a true Galilean telescope and see what Galileo had to work with (Galileo used a diverging lens for his eyepiece which is not the ideal configuration...and you can see why!) Or you can insert your own eyepiece as the holder accepts any standard 1.25" eyepeice. The included nut allows you to mount the telescope on any standard camera tripod. I posted a previous blog entry on my attempts at imaging with a Galileoscope.
The assembly is simple and requires no tools. The telescope can be put together and taken apart easily multiple times.
There are free educational materials available on the web site covering how telescopes work as well as how to osberve with the Galileoscope.
The Galileoscopes cost $15 plus shipping ($12.50 each if you order 100 or more, say for a school, astronomy club, or just get everyone on the block together to order them). I have been talking to a lot of people at meetings and there are some college professors who are making this a madatory item for their students in the fall.
When you order a Galileoscope, you have the option to donate one or more to underserved students around the world.
And there are a couple of Racine connections. Professor Doug Arion of Carthage College has been heavily involved in the design and the manufacturing partner is Merit Models of Racine.
Sorry if this sounds like a commercial. A lot of people have worked hard and put a lot of time into its development and I want to see a LOT of Galieoscopes out there!
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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5 comments:
Cool! I really want to get one of these. I did sign up for an email notice when they would be available from the manufacturer's site a while back. I haven't gotten anything yet.
Thanks for letting me know about that, DA. I will ask them about that tomorrow. Be sure to check spam filters as well.
I do.
Wouldn't put it past the JT to block it though. I saw the story there.
Wow...the JT has had two stories on the Galileoscope. The first one from early January (I was running the Disney Marathon the day it was published) and the more recent one when orders started being accepted. I was hoping they would cover this as Racine has a pretty good size role in this international project.
One quibble: They keep describing it as a 20 inch telescope. The focal length of the objective is 20 inches (the telescope is a little longer than that but not much). Telescopes are usually described by their diameter which is 2 inches in this case.
Still, we appreciate the stories.
I might order for one these instead of hauling my monstrousity around.
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