Big DIY Amateur Telescope Project

Steve Taylor writes: "News from England. We (crazy English people) have just received a 42" mirror blank, to build an Internet-enabled robotic telescope. We are going to grind and figure the mirror ourselves. This is open source hardware -- everything we do will be freely documented and available to other similarly deranged groups." Good luck, godspeed, and please continue with the same course of treatment.

Impressed..

[tolan's my name]

..am I that you've managed to do this. One or two questions/suggestions about making it more 'open-source'.

Have an open day! Collect polls of what things [spaces?] people would like to see during the first day of operation...could draw a crowd.

If your interneting the picture have you considered a discussion site to allow people to discuss what they see, share observations etc etc?

Good Luck

Good thing...

[maddogsparky]

it's in LONDON. And I don't think the Brits would take too kindly to the CIA telling them what to do.

Of course, now that I think about it, the CIA could ask the US State Department to lean on Britain. After all, there is only one super power, and the British government still seems to act like it owes the US for its help during WWII.

Re:Don't be surprised

[cgreer]

You can actually see a number of geostationary
spy satallites with just a regular 35mm SLR.
Just point it up at the sky, open the shutter
and wait. The satallites will actually be the
little white dots that don't move, and the stars
will all rotate around the celestial pole.

You really don't need a bit scope for this.

Re:Don't be surprised

[Christopher Thomas]

If the CIA shut it down, I mean there's a reason why all the big telescopes are government operated, there's stuff out there they don't want us to see...

Really? Like what?

The US's rivals already have telescopes that are more than good enough to spot anything the US's telescopes could spot. What is there to hide?

The real reason why telescopes are government-funded is that no sane private company would build them - there's no revenue stream. They're second only to particle accelerators as an example of expensive blue-sky research.

Re:Don't be surprised

[scheme]

They're second only to particle accelerators as an example of expensive blue-sky research

I think they beat particle accelerators. At least with accelerators you can use them as a very bright source of synchrotron radiation and use them for materials science research and non destructive examinations of objects and materials. Check out the APXS (Advanced proton synchrotron source?).

Re:Don't be surprised

[DJerman]

They're second only to particle accelerators as an example of expensive blue-sky research.

Better for black-sky research, wouldn't you say?

As for revenue stream, what about all the research grants? Don't astronomers already pay for telescope time from their grant money, to defray operating costs?

Besides, Palomar, Wilson and a number of other observatories and telescopes were originally built by private institutions (money for Palomar's 200-inch telescope came from the Rockefeller Foundation, for instance) and were originally operated by them. Don't know if any are still non-government (assuming we're paranoid enough to call CalTech a government institution), but there's history for private endowment of big astronomy.