The eVscope – A new era in Astronomy for Urban Dwellers in Light Polluted Skies

There has been a recent paper published on the Acta Astronautica website about a telescope under development, that will soon be available to the public (depending on when you read this, it might already be available). It is specifically designed to facilitate viewing from light polluted skies, a problem that exists for many observers. This is called the eVscope.

The telescope is a Newtonian (reflector), with a 4.5 in (114.5 cm) aperture, so it isn’t really all that large, in terms of light gathering power. However, it has a low-light CMOS sensor at the prime focus, essentially an electronic camera. That sensor captures multiple frames of an image, using exposure times of between 1 millisecond and 4 seconds. An onboard computer then stacks and processes these frames - the usual processing that you might do with an astrophotography program is done automatically to improve the image. This all produces an image that is projected through the electronics eyepiece. Though the setup is designed to mimic dark sky viewing, the data can also be accessed by the user in TIFF format, so that additional processing and analysis can be performed.

The telescope also contains an algorithm to find and identify stars and deep sky objects, based on a large internal map in memory. In that sense, it is a goto telescope with embedded data that can also can display the relevant information right on the viewing screen (i.e. through the eyepiece) as shown in the photo from the paper.

So, it is intended to make it easy to find and to identify objects, two obstacles to observing that get in the way of many observers enjoyment. Though learning how to star-hop and such can be its own reward, it can be quite tedious, time-consuming and frustrating for anyone who is not quite dedicated; this helps users to spend more time observing and less time searching.

The objects in the telescopes database include:

Planets and the moon
Messier objects (all 110)
Thousands of NGC objects (at least 7840 of them)
Thousands of smaller solar system objects, such as asteroids and dwarf planets.

The ease of use of the telescope, along with its embedded data handling should enable the data from each scope to be used for scientific work, yielding a sort of citizen science crowd-sourcing of astronomic observations. That could enhance the study of transient events as well as helping keep a global watch on possibly dangerous bodies that could wreak havoc on the Earth due to a collision.

The paper gives some examples of the eVscope’s scientific possibilities, including light curves from occultations, such as this occultation of a 13^th magnitude star by Pluto.

The eVscope is supposed to be available to the public soon, by early 2020. It won’t be cheap – their website is currently advertising $2999 U.S., with a delivery data of summer 2020, according to this screenshot. If the reviews of the product hold up, it looks very tempting.

Sources:

Unistellar eVscopes: Smart, portable, and easy-to-use telescopes for exploration, interactive learning, and citizen astronomy, Acta Astronautica 166 (2020) 23–28

Franck Marchis , Arnaud Malvachea, Laurent Marfisia, Antonin Borota, Emmanuel Arboucha

Unistellar, 19 Rue Vacon 13001 Marseille, France

SETI Institute, Carl Sagan Center, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Suite 200, Mountain View, CA, USA

eVscope Website:

https://unistellaroptics.com/

And if $3000 is a bit too much, here are a couple of short science fiction stories that you might want to try for only 99 cents.

The Zoo Hypothesis or The News of the World: A Science Fiction Story

In the field known as Astrobiology, there is a research program called SETI, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. At the heart of SETI, there is a mystery known as The Great Silence, or The Fermi Paradox, named after the famous physicist Enrico Fermi. Essentially, he asked “If they exist, where are they?”.

Some quite cogent arguments maintain that if there was extraterrestrial intelligence, they should have visited the Earth by now. This story, a bit tongue in cheek, gives a fictional account of one explanation for The Great Silence, known as The Zoo Hypothesis. Are we a protected species, in a Cosmic Zoo? If so, how did this come about? Read on, for one possible solution to The Fermi Paradox.

The short story is about 6500 words, or about half an hour at typical reading speeds.

Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Netherlands: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Mexico: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B076RR1PGD

Amazon India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B076RR1PGD

The Magnetic Anomaly: A Science Fiction Story

“A geophysical crew went into the Canadian north. There were some regrettable accidents among a few ex-military who had become geophysical contractors after their service in the forces. A young man and young woman went temporarily mad from the stress of seeing that. They imagined things, terrible things. But both are known to have vivid imaginations; we have childhood records to verify that. It was all very sad. That’s the official story.”

The short story is about 6000 words, or about half an hour at typical reading speeds.