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Finding Objects in the Night Sky..Celestron's SkyScout

Techstination feature for Monday, December 11, 2006

How many objects can you name in the night sky? With the SkyScout…the answers are easy. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Celestron is best known for its telescopes. But the hottest product the company has on the market now doesn't magnifiy at all. The SkyScout is a handheld device that in a word…is amazing. Chief Technology Officer Richard Hedrick…

"It can identify what you're looking at, it can locate something that you want to see. So what you do is you look through the SkyScout, point it up at the sky. Look at a star, you say , gee, what is that? Hit the target button, and it will tell you, oh that's Arcturus or oh, that's Jupiter. And at the same time, you can go through and see what objects are up and say, oh, Saturn's supposed to be up. You can have it guide you to Saturn. It has little arrows inside that say go left, left left…up, up, up…there…you're on the object."

The information is in a well lit LCD screen on the side. Inside the box…is lots of technology….

"SkyScout needs to know where it's pointing in the sky. And we use magnetic sensors and we use gravity sensors and we use a GPS and then microprocessors and everything. It has a real mix of a lot of different technologies in order to achieve what nothing else has been able to achieve so far."

The price, about 400 dollars. What it brings is astronomy to the masses…and when it comes to the market for the device… it seems the sky is the limit. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.