Thursday, April 12, 2007

SkySkyout Personal Planetarium cont’d

Galileo would probably be impressed.

So how does this cool hi-tech gadget work? The Celestron SkyScout locates objects two different ways. It can tell you what star or planet you are pointing at. It can also guide you to it using the viewfinder, by selecting the name of the star from a list. The database contains over 6,000 planets, constellations and stars. It also gives you some pretty impressive information about each one as well.

The science behind these functions works via a GPS receiver, which you probably know uses sattelites to locate your current position on earth. This is not exactly a new technology. It also uses a special type of software that can calculate where the stars and planets are at that particular moment and utilizes 3 “axix sensors” which act to measure earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields.

In the next blog, we will look at it’s features in a bit more detail.

You can click here for more opinions or to purchase the Celestron SkyScout personal planetarium.

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