Re: [ATM] the future of amateur telescope making and amateurastronomy

["Kowalski, Mark S" <mark.kowalski@hp.com>]

I was originally going to put this "nano mirror" item on the list as an
April Fool's joke, scripting it as a news release from Meade.  Didn't,
but then I saw this topic start and decided that, although the idea was
pretty far out there, it was within the realm of possibility and would
offer some real advantages.  Who wouldn't want a 36" scope that weighs
50 pounds?!?

Your ideas remind me of the sailboat "Warm Rain" which was a very sturdy
and simple boat sailed around the world in the 60's or 70's.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic-Luc Webb [mailto:dlwebb@canit.se] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 12:40 AM
To: Kowalski, Mark S
Cc: ATM Superheros
Subject: Re: [ATM] the future of amateur telescope making and
amateurastronomy


On Tue, 8 May 2007, Kowalski, Mark S wrote:

> As nano technologies are put into production, the traditional glass 
> primary mirror will be replaced by a thin, metallic, reflective film 
> that floats above a nano electrostatic array.  The array will be 
> managed by a CPU to maintain it in a parabolic shape and automatically

> correct for environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, air 
> currents). Similarly, the secondary mirror will be a thin film 
> floating in mid-air (no spider) and maintained flat by an array in the

> cage.  'course, this will first come to fruition in products released 
> by Celestron-Meade.
>
> Mark

I note that there is a tendency (my lab included) to go for the latest
high tech instruments. They are fantastically complicated, with
components produces by hundreds if not thousands of high tech companies.
The price for each data point has in some cases risen drammatically,
while the quality of data and underlying scientific reasoning has
sometimes been inferior. I often fall back to techniques from the mid to
late 1800's, or sometimes as recent as 1950's. This has been because we
simply could not ever get the actual science done with the latest high
tech toy. Sadly, big research labs do not often run cost/benefit
analysis. We also rarely discuss if we can answer a question with
existing techniques. This is partly because our lives revolve around
impact factors and getting into "top" journals has turned into something
of a Hollywood production where one needs to show off flashy Powerpoint
presentations of findings with instruments that sometimes seem to
reflect budget more than scientific achievement.

An engineering friend of mine once explained to me that an optimal
design includes features like minimal components and minimal
interdepencies between components, particularly when they are
manufactured by different entities.

ATM's are not driven by the same forces that large research facilities
are, and can/will opt for cost effectiveness. I anticipate ATMs in the
future will find ways to adapt some high tech techniques such that they
are cost effective for an amateur budget, but I am a bit skeptical about
replacing glass that we currently use for multicomponent computer-driven
optics (maybe a few people will find a niche for special cases). Glass
really is a remarkable material for telescopes and has passed the test
of time. I expect most will be content with glass, as is.

I could envision that the type of glass we use might change.
I could also envision that improved manufacturing techniques and
increased competition in the market might make telescope mirrors so
cheap that ATMs may have little reason to produce some of the more
common configs. With such off-the shelf optics, maybe ATMs will be
spending more energy on configuring their systems for specialized
applications. For instance, quite a few of us could be measuring Doppler
shifts if our scopes were configured to do so, and there have been some
real scientific breakthroughs using this technique.

That being said, I think there might be a trend in the future for
emphasis to shift to peripheral attachments for scopes to do various
photometric measurements. While many ATMs make mirrors, few make
eyepieces. Price, quality and difficulty in making eyepieces from
scratch favored buying off-the-shelf eyepieces. The same might happen to
primary mirrors. I would guess things will change towards assembling
more complex scopes from modular off-the-shelf commercial components.

With the Internet, there might be a trend towards automation in order to
place scopes at remote locations and/or for scopes in different
locations to be linked. Cheap mass produced mirrors would favor this.

As an aside, I note that both Celestron and Meade have been having some
serious money problems. I recently bought a no-name brand 60X spotting
scope for so little money and such good quality I could not justify
building my own scope of similar aperture and F/ratio. I also could not
find a reason for the added expense of an equivalent Celestron or Meade.
There was no shortage of fittings to attach common commercial cameras,
and digital cameras with removable lenses can be had cheap. It seems to
be getting easier, cheaper and more versatile to assemble a very good
scope from off-the-shelf parts, which makes me suspect that few people
will still be pushing glass a few years from now, albeit they will
nonetheless still be using glass.

Dominic-Luc Webb

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