One of the fun aspects of being at a conference like AAAS is that you can be sitting at breakfast in the hotel when a group of people suddenly pull out a bunch of plastic parts which they rapidly assemble into a telescope and start looking at the skyline.
Now just about anybody will be able to see the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and other astronomical objects not visible to the naked eye. Stephen Pompea from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory is leading the charge to make the Galileoscope, a high-quality, cheap telescope, available to anybody interested in star-gazing, especially in an urban environment, for the International Year of Astronomy, or IYA.
He had been frustrated that most telescopes for children were expensive, had poor optics, and the eyepieces were hard to use. He had discovered from his experience that many children would look through a telescope, not really be able to see what they had been told about, and essentially shrug it off and give up. "The view of Saturn is exciting to kids and will get them interested in science," Pompea said. But first the child has to actually see the rings.
Shortly after this interview, Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, took an interest in the Galileoscope and played around with it. Photo courtesy of Doug Isbell, AAS.
Chatting with me at his breakfast table in the hotel lobby, Pompea told me that "most telescope kits are good to demonstrate the principles of optics, but not good for actually looking at things." The Galileoscope is powerful enough to see the kinds of objects Galileo could see but the simple design is based on how kids use small telescopes. Eyepieces, in particular, are typically difficult for children to use. This eyepiece has a wide angle from which it be seen into, and it works well wearing glasses, as I discovered looking through the high atrium windows at the Chicago skyline.
The Galileoscope debuted at the opening of the IYA in Paris a few weeks ago, but it will be available for orders starting this week.
At breakfast, Kevin Marvel, executive officer of the American Astronomical Society, said, "Our goal is to have one million telescopes around the world this year." He hopes to have them widely distributed in time for the northern hemisphere autumn observing season. The telescope will cost US$15, with discounts for orders of 100 or more.
Doug Isbell, also of AAS, added that "Jupiter is great in August and September" in the United States. He hopes that the telescope becomes one of the major legacies of the IYA.
After peering through the telescope, I called over a colleague who knows a lot more about telescopes than I and asked him to take a look. He was impressed and commented that he has a nice telescope but doesn't use it as often as he would like because he doesn't want to leave it setup on a tripod all the time, and it takes too long setup and pack away for casual use. He seemed to think this would be much more useful for casual viewing and thought he would probably get one.
The Gaileoscope will be supplemented by educational activities for teachers, astronomy clubs, and anybody else interested in using it.
See the Galileoscope being pulled apart and reconstructed in this videoshot at AAAS in Chicago.
