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Space station gets new telescope...

emadmoussa

By emadmoussa
in The Astro Lounge

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emadmoussa

emadmoussa

Posted
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Astronauts on the International Space Station are installing a new modified Celestron telescope. This won’t be used to observe the stars, but instead look back to Earth to acquire imagery of specific areas of the world for disaster analysis .

Ok, science aside, any suggestions on how to align this telescope?

post-27451-0-92558200-1362605308_thumb.j

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JamesF

JamesF

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And just think of all the problems they'll have with air currents if they try to use it from inside. I hope no-one has suggested they just open a window and point it outside.

James

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E621Keith

E621Keith

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I thought it was a Meade when I first saw the photo, until I had a more careful look at the fork and realised it was a Celestron CPC with a jacket around the base.

They probably chose Celestron, because satellite phone call to Meade's customer service cost too much and Meade wants you to send the whole scope back to Mexico for repair rather than sending you the replacement parts.

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Stargazer_00

Stargazer_00

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You have to look at the economics here. It costs how much to put 1kg in orbit, 20 grand? And they shipped up a dual fork mount and motors. They could've just made a graphite arm that bolted to the wall next to the window at about 100 grams. It hardly need be load bearing in space, right?On that basis this is probably fake.

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nytecam

nytecam

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Looks like the Celestron on display in Currys yesterday - pointing down at the fork base - hehehehe - bet they forgot the diddy manual too.

But seriously [Celestron] folk - the mount is useless moving at ISS speed - just aim OTA through a clean window and snap away.

BTW - the view 'up' would be rubbish, not fantastic, at that speed :rolleyes:

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E621Keith

E621Keith

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Looks like the Celestron on display in Currys yesterday - pointing down at the fork base - hehehehe - bet they forgot the diddy manual too.

But seriously [Celestron] folk - the mount is useless moving at ISS speed - just aim OTA through a clean window and snap away.

BTW - the view 'up' would be rubbish, not fantastic, at that speed :rolleyes:

It's NASA, surely you didn't think they'd just send the vanilla model up? Just look at how many NASA boffins surrounding it, do you think they can resist the urge to stripped it apart and the upgraded what they think can be upgrading.

It's a CPC925 equipped with Hyperstar and Starlight instrument microtouch focuser.

Fit_Check_054.jpg

http://iservpathfinder.com/index.html

PS.The C925 club members can now brag about how one of its brother is working as a NASA space telescope :D

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DaveS

DaveS

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I thought it was a Meade when I first saw the photo, until I had a more careful look at the fork and realised it was a Celestron CPC with a jacket around the base.

They probably chose Celestron, because satellite phone call to Meade's customer service cost too much and Meade wants you to send the whole scope back to Mexico for repair rather than sending you the replacement parts.

Just think of the pretty fireball one of those would make if they sent it back to Mexico "the quick way" :grin:

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DBushell

DBushell

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Would I be correct in saying that from up there if they were to hypothetically look at say Jupiter or Mars through the telescope it would show up in true color without having to stack images from a movie?

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JamesF

JamesF

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I imagine they'd get a much clearer image because they won't have all the atmospheric distortion that we do. That might allow the human eye to pick out colour more easily. If they were imaging they might well still want to stack a sequence of frames if they were imaging using high frame rate cameras, but without needing to fight all our atmospheric distortion they could perhaps get a much higher quality image by taking a single two-minute exposure rather than needing high frame rate image sequences in the first place.

James

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Treeden

Treeden

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They published one of the CPC's 'First Light' images last month on the SERVIR and Celestron web sites.

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From the web site:

This 'first light' image from ISERV shows the mouth of the Rio San Pablo in Veraguas,

Panama, as it empties into the Golfo de Montijo. This wetland supports an important local

fishery and provides habitat for many mammals and reptiles as well as several species of

nesting and wintering water birds. (The image was captured on GMT 047 18:44; Saturday,

February 16th, 2013, 2:44 CST. Image dimensions are roughly 14.6 km x 12.5 km. Area is

approximately 183 km2, or 71 mi2. North is to the upper right.)

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