The Galileoscope An IYA2009 Cornerstone Project

jhoare wrote:

We should remember that being poor doesn't make people helpless. They will be able to lash together many variations of rudimentary support from available materials.

That telescope may be rudimentary but imagine what you could see with it on a clear night in some remote village in the African bush.

Given the current economic climate here, it could equally be a remote village in Clare :dry:

DaveGrennan wrote:

At 25-50x you will need some sort of stabilisation, but that could be as simple as suitable tree branch or upturned broom or just perched on a wall! I'd rather see people in third world countries using one of these than nothing at all.

Yea, I know what you're saying.
Obviously, it's better that they got this scope than no scope at all.
I suppoose the point I'm making is that binos would be a better use of resources.

I think the main thrust of providing these scopes is that they are cheap and most importantly, reproduce (as far as we know) the telescope Galileo used. So someone using the scope can get a sense of how astronomy as we know it, started. That in itself is probably pretty humbling.

Furthermore, I suspect that many of these scopes will simply be given away - free. If you look at the funding being handed out for IYA2009, $15 would buy a fair few of these scopes and they can be distributed for free.

Ultimately, the end result will hopefully be that some people are bitten by the bug and they go ahead and join a site like this where they can then start down the rocky road of aperture fever, err, discovery

dmcdona wrote:

I think the main thrust of providing these scopes is that they are cheap and most importantly, reproduce (as far as we know) the telescope Galileo used. So someone using the scope can get a sense of how astronomy as we know it, started. That in itself is probably pretty humbling.

That was the part I forgot to add in my post above!