My Galileoscope

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on my blog, but I finally got my Galileoscope in the mail! I actually got it almost 2 months ago, and I still haven’t had a chance to use it very much…the woes of living in the city!

The instructions that came in the box were terrible, but they have much better instructions posted here (pdf).

I have a difficult  time focusing it, so I plan on getting a tripod for it because my hands aren’t nearly steady enough. But once you have it focused it’s fantastic.

I’ve been able to look at the moon, and it’s just beautiful. I’ve never looked at anything through a telescope before, and there’s nothing like seeing the features of the moon clearly with your own eyes. I hope to have the opportunity soon to get out of the city and try to spot Jupiter or Saturn.

I definitely recommend the Galileoscope for anyone with an interest in astronomy. If you’re American it only costs $15, so it’s quite a bargain. I’m Canadian and in total, with shipping and the conversion to Canadian dollars it cost me less than $40.

Search Terms: “best telescope for sighting mother ships”

I’m always curious to see how people ended up at my blog, so I like reading the different search engine terms that lead people here. Because I’ve made posts about different conspiracy theories and wacky beliefs, I always see some…er, interesting searches that people type in. Mostly stuff about aliens on the moon or Kevin Trudeau, but today someone got here by typing in probably my favourite search terms yet:

“best telescope for sighting mother ships”

I wonder why they’re only interested in the mother ships? Or maybe they already have the best telescope for sighting the regular ships.

Galileoscope…Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy

To mark the International Year of Astronomy a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators have developed a low cost way that allows anyone to take part in backyard astronomy.

Order your Galileoscope now for only $15:

If you don’t need a telescope you can donate them to a local school or give them to your friends and family. Or you can get the best of both worlds and buy your own and donate some in one shot…the website makes it very easy.

The only reason I don’t have a telescope is the expense, so I’m so excited about this. I’m looking forward to seeing Saturn and its rings with my own eyes! I’ve never looked at the stars through a telescope! I can hardly contain my excitement!

Mission to Moon to Search for Water

This is some cool news…

NASA announced on Thursday that they were “on target for a June mission to scour the Moon’s surface for landing sites and water that would allow humans to work and even live on Earth’s nearest neighbor.” -Yahoo!

Lonely moon, waiting for visitors

I’m not sure if this is new news, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it so I’m blogging about it anyways. I think this is really cool, for one thing because – I think it’s pretty obvious – I’m a huge nerd for anything that has to do with astronomy. This is a step towards a continuous human presence in space. Water on the moon would make it so much easier to have a base there, and having a permanent base on the moon opens up some interesting possibilities.

One of these possibilities is giant telescopes on the moon, allowing us to see further out and more clearly than telescopes on Earth, and the space telescopes. It might even be possible to build a telescope with a mirror nearly 5 times as large as any on Earth, and about 20 times as large as Hubble. The special conditions on the moon that would allow for such a telescope include no atmosphere, weak gravity so such a large mirror can be spun, and moon dust that has many of the ingredients necessary to build a mirror.

Artist's concept of astronauts with a telescope on the moon

The moon’s a cool thing, we’re lucky to have it, it’s so close and it’s within our reach to have a presence there…hopefully this upcoming mission will provide some helpful information.