Unistellar eVscope
October 28th, 2017I’ve been following their progress for several months leading up to this Kickstarter campaign. If you’re any sort of astronomy nerd, you’ll want to check this out.
I think it would be so much fun for me and my kids to get a tasking request from SETI Institute and go out to set up the instrument to see if we could help.
Via: Unistellar/Kickstarter:
Unistellar’s Enhanced Vision is a patent-pending technology that is based on the accumulation of light over short periods of time using a low light sensor, as well as on our proprietary algorithms of image processing that run on an on-board calculation module. The resulting amplified image is projected at infinite focus into the eye of the observer with 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, creating a genuine and live experience of sky observation. Sensor settings and image processing parameters are automatically adjusted.
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Campaign mode is developed in partnership with SETI Institute to allow every eVscope user to become a citizen scientist. In the case of an upcoming transient event (asteroid flyby, supernova, comets, transits of satellites,…), you will receive an observation request from scientists directly on your smartphone. Coordinates and instructions are wirelessly transferred to the eVscope, which will automatically point the astronomical event and connect the eVscope with a network of thousands of users all contributing to scientific research.
Awesome. I’ve forwarded this info to some friends. I think it would be an excellent ongoing project/piece of equipment for schools; Imagine families bringing their kids to the school grounds or a local park in the evening to peek into the heavens.
I’ve been on the verge of buying a telescope for about 20 years.
This is THE ONE.
But I’m waiting until it comes out and gets into the hands of independent reviewers. I’d rather spend more later, knowing that they actually delivered on the hype, than save a few hundred bucks.
This telescope is completely different than anything that has gone before, so there’s a lot that can go wrong. They seem very much for real though.
A long time ago, I dreamed of building a system of networked “sky watchers” to find and track UFOs. The units would be able to track and classify aircraft and satellites and… *theremin music* “other objects” automatically.
I’ve spotted many satellites that are not in Stellarium. Even if someone wasn’t into woowoo, the freaks who track secret satellites and UAVs would love such a thing.
Image intensifiers, arduino, cloud computing, no-joke math, star catalogs, flight plans, GPS, machine vision, make it all weatherproof and robust… I have a couple of propellers in my beanie, but I’m more than a few short for something like that. And never mind where the money would come from.
Anyway, this Unistellar scope will be my consolation prize.
Hm…Regarding what you said about tracking UFOs, I wonder if it does infra-red…
It’s a digital sensor, so technically, it could detect infrared, but I’d be surprised if they made it so that the IR filter could be removed.
About your UFO idea, I’ve been followwing this group for a couple of years. They have implemented a variant of your idea and they are using spectra to identify real UFO (no hit yet).
You can find them here
http://www.ufo-science.com/?lang=en
(most of the site is french but there is an english part)
Holy shit.
https://www.ufo-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/slider_ufocatch2-e1473530047230.png
Wow. I hadn’t thought about spectral analysis. I was thinking to have the system look for objects exhibiting “impossible” delta-vs. I thought that would be the easiest thing to try at first. It would exclude almost everything that has a sane explanation.