Looking to buy a telescope for your kid?

[pokerfan]

Can you swing $15?

One of my biggest pet peeves psychotic hatreds are overpriced crappy department store telescopes that wind up turning kids off of the hobby/career.

When I was about 9 years old, I saw Saturn with my own eye through a telescope and I, like Galileo, was never quite the same.

The Galileoscope project (part of the International Year of Astronomy) will have children worldwide build Galileoscopes in school, museum, nature and science center, national park, and library settings.

Go http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=50171&mesg_id=50171">here to see my post on the science forum and learn more.

[ReliantJ]

1. Look for your sales to soar

all you need to do is talk about 2012. :). But these look awesome. As a big kid, I'll probably purchase one.

[pokerfan]

2. For $15 per, I'm buying a shit-load

All my nieces and nephews.. some of the neighbor kids... a couple to donate to the local school... Probably make a couple $12.50 anonymous donations as well. These are getting distributed as soon as I can get them.

I was reading about the project on an astronomy blog and the amateur astronomers were pointing out its deficiencies. "It's not an apochromat." "You have to supply your own mount." "It's plastic." I wanted to scream, "It's $15!!!"

And at $15, I willing to wager it out performs telescopes costing 10x as much.

[ogneopasno]

3. We bought and assembled our own telescope...I can't remember where we got it.

It was a leetle pricier than $15, though! Seeing the moons of Jupiter blew me away. I sat there for 10 minutes looking at Jupiter with the naked eye -- nope, no moons -- and then looking at it through the telescope...damn! There's moons there! No moons, moons, no moons, moons...laughing with delight. Same thing with Saturn. I knew it had rings -- I had read about them, seen them in books and on TV -- but when I actually saw them, I was amazed.

What a great project. The sky is beautiful, and it's free for everyone to look at, even without a telescope.

[pokerfan]

4. Our club hosted an Astrocon

a few years ago. We bought a dozen kits from http://stargazer.isys.ca/">Stargazer Steve and Bill Nye the Science Guy helped the kids put them together.

Among the discoveries Galileo made:
- sunspots (meaning that the sun wasn't a pristine celestial sphere)
- mountains and craters on the Moon (meaning the moon wasn't a pristine celestial sphere either)
- lesser moons orbiting Jupiter (meaning that not everything circled the earth)
- Venus going through phases just like our moon (direct evidence for a heliocentric solar system)

[ogneopasno]

5. AH! That was it! Stargazer Steve!

I was VERY pleased with the project and the result. We use it all the time.

Are you in MN? Bill Nye is from MN, IIRC.

[pokerfan]

6. I thought it might be

They're pretty popular kits.

I'm in Washington state but it was the big annual convention that floats from city to city. We were supposed to have Horkheimer but he got sick at the last minute. We did get astronaut Story Musgrave. Man, that guy is a character.