The SkyScout, by Celestron, debuted at CES this past year, and wowed audiences with it’s size, magnifier, and built-in GPS technology. The Skyscout allows you to put in your earthly coordinates, and churns away at calculating, along with the date and time, exactly what it is in the night sky that you’re currently looking at through the viewfinder. Seriously, I could have used something like this in my Astronomy classes. You can point the Skyscout at a point in the sky and it’ll tell you what you’re seeing, or alternatively if you’re looking for something in particular, you can tell the SkyScout what it is you’d like to see, and the device itself will help you find it among all the stars in the sky.
But wait, there’s more! The SkyScout also has loads of information about many of the celestial objects you’ll be looking at, including mythological stories, history lessons about who discovered what, and actual scientific and astronomical information about many many objects in the sky. The device can identify over 6,000 objects, and provides its feedback to you both as text on the side-screen (illuminated in orange-red so as to not create too much white light to obscure the objects you’re looking at!) and as an audio lesson.
All of this will run your about $400 bucks. A bit expensive, you might think, but not so much for the world of features crammed into this device. I can see schools buying a few to use in the classroom, and I could definitely see some college and amateur observatories getting into this thing, not to mention a whole world of amateur astronomers like me.
If you’re interested, head over to the product website to learn more about it. The SkyScout is shipping in May of 2006, but plenty of stores, all linked on the product website, are taking pre-orders.