Chief Mogrifier
Posts: 8,796 
May 10th, 2008, 11:52 AM
As a comparison, close to thirty five years ago we bought our son a 2" refractor telescope. As limited as that telescope was, we found pretty well every thing that telescope was capable of seeing. Over the years we were able to afford bigger and better telescopes and and the images we got were bigger and better as we obtained better telescopes. My son and I spent many years and thousands of hours finding the Messier objects as well as anything within the reach of whatever telescope we had at the time. The experience my son and I had is a priceless treasure that cannot be replaced by a God-damned computer program containing the whole compendium of known space objects. Will kids still be willing to go out and freeze their buns off looking for a glimpse of some object soley because they haven't yet seen it? I wonder.
Quote:
This thing has been touted as some kind of tool to get kids interested in astronomy. I think it will likely turn kids off. What we have here is a kind of "google universe" that doesn't require any searching. Just call up what you want to look at and it will apppear. What will appear is the best image of the object from the best Earth-bound telescopes or from Hubble.
The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.
WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.
WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.
As a comparison, close to thirty five years ago we bought our son a 2" refractor telescope. As limited as that telescope was, we found pretty well every thing that telescope was capable of seeing. Over the years we were able to afford bigger and better telescopes and and the images we got were bigger and better as we obtained better telescopes. My son and I spent many years and thousands of hours finding the Messier objects as well as anything within the reach of whatever telescope we had at the time. The experience my son and I had is a priceless treasure that cannot be replaced by a God-damned computer program containing the whole compendium of known space objects. Will kids still be willing to go out and freeze their buns off looking for a glimpse of some object soley because they haven't yet seen it? I wonder.
Chief Mogrifier
Posts: 8,796
May 10th, 2008, 01:02 PM
Haul that telescope out of the basement and let me know what it is. I'm sure I can tell you what it's capable of.
Quoting karrie
The point Karrie, was that this computer program is being set up as a replacement for a real telescope and the images, a lot of them computer generated, a replacement for real images that one might view with a real telescope. I think real amateur astronomers will ignore this garbage and spent their time looking through real telescopes, at real things, in real time.
I've had a telescope sitting in the basement collecting dust for a year now. I need to either get it out and use it or sell the damn thing. Perhaps it would be a hit at my parent's cabin. Hmmm.
Haul that telescope out of the basement and let me know what it is. I'm sure I can tell you what it's capable of.
Genius
Posts: 821
Location: Red Deer AB
Location: Red Deer AB
May 10th, 2008, 08:54 PM
Karrie, move up to the 21st century, check out sidewalk telescopes. The expensive part is the mirror, you can get a 17" I believe, tie that into a digital camera and some remote control tracking and aiming and you can view things from your couch.
http://www.telescopesineducation.com/dobson/index.html
Karrie, move up to the 21st century, check out sidewalk telescopes. The expensive part is the mirror, you can get a 17" I believe, tie that into a digital camera and some remote control tracking and aiming and you can view things from your couch.
http://www.telescopesineducation.com/dobson/index.html
