amateur_telecope_020201Amateur astronomers may have a window seat waiting for them on the International Space Station, though they wont have to leave Earth to see the view.
A group of U.S. stargazers plan to mount an optical telescope on the International Space Station, connect it to the Internet and give amateur astronomers their first foothold in outer space. A land-based prototype for the system, dubbed the International Space Station Amateur Telescope, will be unveiled Saturday at Winer Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
The test telescope will be remote-controlled from Vanderbilt Universitys Dyer Observatory in Tennessee, where, space images and observations will be archived and distributed to the Internet for all to see.
But far from being a mere image archive for space enthusiasts, the system is meant also to provide armchair astronomers with their first space-based tool for observing the sky. Some observations, project organizers said, could even be made live, though reservations for telescope time will certainly have to be made in advance.
"This is a major undertaking for us," said project manager Orville H. Brettman, a past president of the Astronomical League, a collection of more than 240 amateur astronomical societies in the U.S., responsible for the project.
Brettman said the league intends to put a modest-sized telescope aboard the International Space Stations Brazilian module, one of the last to be assembled. It will be a different model from the telescope being used in the test run, but the operating system behind it will be identical.
For example, the telescope in Arizona will take images of space, send them via satellite to computers at Dyer Observatory where they will be processed and archived to the projects web site. Amateur astronomers will then be able to fill out request forms for observations on planets, stars and other objects and view the results as they are posted.
Robotic or remote-controlled telescopes themselves are nothing new to the field of astronomy. They allow astronomers to make hundreds of observations using an automated system, instead of standing next to a telescope and adjusting it each time a new observation was needed.
The NASA-sponsored Telescopes in Education project, or TIE, is one of a number of land-based efforts to connect robotic telescopes to the Internet and promote interest in astronomy. TIE director Gilbert A. Clark expects more than 12,000 elementary and high school students to use the system in 2002 and said there is an obvious educational draw to the Astronomical Leagues plan.
"I think it has a lot to do with the imagination," he said. "The idea of having access to a telescope in space, your own mini-Hubble per say, would be attractive to students."
The Astronomical Leagues space-based telescope system will give amateur stargazers a chance to see the sky in more detail than they could ever reach from their own backyards. Because the Earths atmosphere isnt a factor when observing from space, a telescope there can observe more stars at more wavelengths of light than one on the ground, league members said.
And as cities get bigger, Brettman said, robotic telescopes, controlled by remote and accessed through a classroom computer, may be the only way urban dwelling space buffs can find a nice dark sky to observe.
The Astronomical League plans to have their space telescope ready for delivery when the International Space Station is completed, hopefully by 2009, and eventually support it with a small network of three or four observation posts on the ground.
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