3 ms·
Aperture isn't just the amount of light, but also resolving power. A small aperture with a long exposure might show you a DSO, but probably at >arcsec resolutio
by madaxe_again 9y ago
Aperture isn't just the amount of light, but also resolving power. A small aperture with a long exposure might show you a DSO, but probably at >arcsec resolution.
But - this makes it accessible. I don't think you can say the same for pixinsight, dss, phd, etc. - there's a fair old learning curve to do it the proper way.
- CydeWeys 9y agoYes, making the features easier to use is always a good thing of course, and many a company has become a successful player in its field not by inventing new things but by making existing things more accessible. What I don't like about the press release is that it makes it sound like they've come up with all these new revolutions in astronomy, which near as I can tell they haven't done at all.
- breck 9y agoI guess it depends on how you define "revolution". I can clearly foresee how this might lead to 100x more people getting into astronomy. The current amateur experience is to look at the Moon, look at Jupiter, look at Saturn's rings, and then put the telescope in the attic. Once this real-time image-stacking telescope that works just like an old fashioned "dumb" telescope is refined, the experience for amateurs will be so much better. So I would call this "revolutionary", in that if you graphed the # of amateur astronomers, I could see this being a critical non-linear point where the line shoots up at a much faster rate. So a "revolution" for experts? Probably not. (Although perhaps even experts will get a lot out of the speed and simplicity of it). But for astronomy as a field, possibly.
- CydeWeys 9y agoHere's hoping. I'm not quite that optimistic about it as you are, but I'd love to be wrong!