76/300 Pocket Dobson: a tiny yet real telescope that comes with you everywhere

A “relaxation” project, mostly drawn on planes to and from Norway this month, where I had to travel to setup a digital art installation in Kristiansand with friends from the digital art collective Lab212. It has been drawn with one major constraint: it must fit in the inner pocket of my jacket (well, one specific jacket), except for the rods.

This is a 3D-printed dobsonian telescope built around a 76mm/300mm parabolic mirror kit. While there are plenty of mini-scope models on the internet, I wanted something that looked like a dobson that went a bit too hard through the clothes dryer, but without compromise on what matters:

Balance Smooth movements Rigidity Collimatable Focusable eyepiece holder A minimum of style (entirely subjective)

Orbidium is an open-source application demo that displays asteroid orbits using data parsed from the NASA Minor Planet Center (MPC) database, featuring basic 2D rendering and parsing of the MPC data file.

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) is a free online registry and repository for source codes of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists, including solar system astronomers, and lists codes that have been used in research that has appeared in, or been submitted to, peer-reviewed publications. The ASCL is indexed by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and Web of Science and is citable by using the unique ascl ID assigned to each code.

Collimation of a SCT is critical to getting the sharpest images possible, especially when viewing planets at high magnification. There are three stages to a really good collimation using the stars or a star-like source (such as a solar reflection off a distant ball bearing or Christmas tree ornament).

NOX MINIMA is a free sky map

Cabbage in the sky

An online planetarium running in your web browser based on the open source Stellarium Web Engine project.

Details the design and construction of an orrery with the spheres for the sun, earth and moon using Lego Technic pieces.

Created by Attilla Danko, it’s the astronomers forecast. It shows at a glance when, in the next 96 hours, we might expect clear and dark skies for one specific observing site.

For any date on which SDO/AIA has been observing the Sun, you may view a set of the observable wavelength channels, an SDO/HMI magnetogram, and blends of these channels.

Web app that uses your location to provide with the times where satellites will be visible in the night sky.

Map of the Universe