Re: FW: Unistellar eVscope 2 Telescope. Immersive Galactic Experience.

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Hi, Tom, Per, all.  I think it would make sense to get a small telescope
if people would like to arrange observing nights with school classes.
But I'm not sure if this particular model (Unistellar eVscope2) is the
right choice.  There is a continuum between looking at beautiful
pictures taken by JWST and going outside and looking at the stars with
your unaided eye.  This telescope is at a strange place in that
continuum.  It has a photosensor that digitizes the image.  As far as I
know, you cannot look through it directly.  There are a lot of good
things about that.  It will give you a much deeper image, because it can
integrate for longer than your eyes.  It has digital image processing.
It avoids the problem where you can't usefully have low magnification
with a large aperture telescope because the resulting beam of light from
the eyepiece doesn't fit into your pupil.  But now you have to ask this
question: If you're not pointing the telescope and you're not looking
into the telescope, why are you outside in the cold?  For that matter,
why have you set up your telescope in a lousy location like the Boston
area instead of on top of a dark mountain?

This particular telescope has something even stranger: an electronic
eyepiece, meaning that when you look through the eyepiece you aren't
seen the light that came into the telescope but rather looking at a
screen that displays the image that was recorded by the photosensor.
Looking into telescope eyepieces is a pain.  The eyepiece is usually at
an awkward angle and you have to crane your neck.  In this case, why not
just look at your phone?  Unless I misunderstood something, the only
purpose is to pretend that you are looking through the telescope.

The other issue is the price.  I understand we are not very price
sensitive.  But it's worth noting that for the same price as this 114mm
aperture telescope you could get this 406mm aperture telescope:
https://www.skywatcherusa.com/products/sky-watcher-flextube-400p-synscan
It might not be better: it depends on what you want to look at.  Large
apertures like this are mostly useful for gathering a lot of light from
dim, deep sky objects, which may be hard to see regardless if there is
lots of light pollution.  And because of the iteration time, the
Unistellar will probably let you see things that you couldn't see with
your eye and the larger aperture.  But are you looking at them or at
pictures of them?

Maybe the Unistellar would be great.  Take it outside, set it up, touch
some object on your phone and every kid can see the image simultaneously
on their phone.  But the issues above may be worth thinking about.

                                        Ken