Report by Andrew Ramsay
Graham Cluer was an early adopter. Cheerfully admitting his inability to recognise more than a few asterisms, he found the early GoTo telescope mounts a boon. Despite established amateur astronomers looking down on colleagues who hadn’t even ground their own mirrors, the ease of setting up GoTo mounts eventually persuaded the majority that this was the way forward.
Graham thus introduced his enthusiasm for the new generation of “smart telescopes”, recognising that “traditional astronomers” were cynical about their use. Graham showed us the earliest of these – the French manufacturer’s Unistellar eV. He demonstrated the experience of using it through a series of slides and videos. In essence its 114 mm reflector bundled most of the chores involved in preparing an astronomical telescope for viewing or photography into a simple press of a button. Especially effective was the plate solving process (Graham called this “field identification”). The telescope automatically cycled through a series of adjustments to centre a chosen object in the eyepiece. The eyepiece itself was a tiny screen.
Despite the initial expense, these telescopes rapidly gained popularity, especially once it was realised that they could “stack” images to create credible astrophotography.
Graham then introduced many of the successors, each addressing issues of cost, resolution, access to stacked frames for further processing, portability, and so on.
His conclusion was that the smart telescopes were here to stay, and that manufacturers would continue to develop better and more effective models.
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