One Telescope per Child | Hacker News Reader

One Telescope per Child

starstryder.com

22 pointsedw5197 comments

This comment made my day:

"Michael Vergara 23 September 2009 at 6:18 pm # I am a Docent at Palomar Observatory. At Palomar, we purchased a bunch of Galileoscopes. I think the first order was for 100. We have been giving them away to kids on our observatory tours if they participate as the ‘Night Assistant’ while we demonstrate how the Hale Telescope moves across the sky. We have not been advertising this, just doing it. 2009 is also Palomar’s 60th anniversary, and it just seems like a great thing to do. The kids (some young, some not-so-young) have all been ecstatic about receiving a Galileoscope, and we’re happy to help another child experience the night sky."

http://www.starstryder.com/2009/09/22/galileoscope-a-dream-o...

I ordered two of these Sept August 1st and STILL have not received it. Emailing them got no response either. People are apparently getting theirs though as there are plenty of posts/reviews. I can't remember last time I waiting this long for something I ordered. Look forward to it though as it will be my first telescope.

I just got mine last week. After some very tedious aiming I got some clear views of the tiny disc of Jupiter through the 50x eyepiece. (I didn't see any of the moons, though.) Now I'm waiting for a good chance to look at the moon! (It was a new moon when the scope arrived, so it's still not out at night...)

I ordered mine back in July for a birthday last week! Gutted it didn't come in time. I'm imagining they must have had production issues and perhaps didn't anticipate the huge demand for these across the world.

I ordered 30 pieces of this 1 month ago, hope they'll arrive soon! I've a much better telescope but this is portable, and it will make me able to introduce to amateur astronomy 29 friends of mine that decided to order one of this with me.

Of course a 50 millimeters instrument can't be ideal to see deep sky objects, otherwise this is a decent beginner telescope, especially since it is possible to mount standard eyepieces, so it is possible to "expand" it :)

I wish I had the $200k to get this started. This is truly a righteous[1] project.

[1] in the sense of being genuine and wonderful

The Galileoscope

https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/

has been discussed regularly on Wisconsin Public Radio. In addition to other WPR programs, about once a month one of its daily shows has a fairly lengthy interview segment with a Wisconsin professor of astronomy. It might well be Dr. Douglas N. Arion, who's listed as one of the principals in the Galileoscope project and who works a bit south of Milwaukee.

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