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Old 27-04-2016, 02:54 AM
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skysurfer
Dark sky rules !

skysurfer is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: 52N 6E (EU)
Posts: 1,152
Quote:
Originally Posted by astroron View Post
I find the idea of video astronomy distressing,
To think of sitting out under a beautiful night and having a telescope
connected to a TV screen just makes me want to give up astronomy.
Lazy astronomy, may as well just do astro imaging.
Or even better buy or download some Hubble or other telescope images
and you will be able to sit inside and watch it in comfort on your big screen.
Cheers
YES, because I like those beautiful dark skies as well. Living in the most light polluting (and often cloudy) country, viewing a real dark sky like I did recently in South Africa (and even in much closer France) is amazing. No screen or Oculus Rift with an astronomy app can beat this, how high resolution it has. Thatis why I stress upon importance of keeping as much dark sky locations on Earth as possible.

NO, because when one *is* in a light polluted area (e.g. Sydney CBD or, worse, Dubai with its hazy skies and LOTS of LP) an electronic eyepiece can reveal real time images with a small scope.

I expect that in the 2020s electronic eyepieces or cameras fitting in a 1.25" or 2" socket exist and are affordable for the amateur. It will use partly the same technology as night vision goggles and have super sensitive sensors. These devices send one or more times a second frames (wirelessly) to a tablet or smartphone which processes the images with stacking and allow real time viewing of faint Halpha nebulas in full color. A kind of 'real time astrophotography'.

Putting an optional coordinate grid and / or an arrow on the screen to point to the desired object would be no problem as accelerometer, inclinometer and GPS technology is no problem. So old scopes without goto and only manual control can easily be 'pushed to' with help of such a device.

These devices allow viewing much fainter objects with a given aperture so such a device used on a small 80mm scope will reveal many faint deepsky objects from an apartment balcony close to Sydney CBD.
And when locatied in a Bortle 0 location it will reveal even more and when a 40+cm Dob is used one can peep almost as deep in to universe as Hubble does now.

The only technology to overcome is the elimination of luminous screens which makes current smartphones almost unreadable in sunlight and too bright during night and replacement by transreflective displays, i.e. very dim (red) in the dark and fully reflective with enough ambient light.

No, these devices won't replace straight optical viewing but just coexist beside it, just like astrophotography does. AP did not beat visual observing despite it reveals MUCH more.
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