Rekindling the love for science in a restless world!
One of the prime motivators for my starting this website is my desire to rekindle the interest of friends and perhaps their children in science and space. We are living in amidst a resurgence of anti-intellectualism, which while never far below the surface has taken on full strength the desire to undermine science, education and the faith in verified fact. This global phenomenon has been years in the making, aided and abetted by our love of sports, we have actually made it very hard for young people to engage in the one critical part of their development – curiosity!
I regard myself above all as intensely curious, something I owe to my teachers and my father who each instilled and amplified my desire to explore my surroundings. The Unistellar scope is by no means my first scope, I started with a Celestron Nextar 4 and built a CCD camera using the then affordable CCD Cookbook design by Richard Berry but that camera has been far surpassed by commercial cameras available at a reasonable cost. Not perfectly satisfied with the DIY and tweak needs of my old setup, needless to say, I was a little disheartened. Years later, as my time became my own again, quite by chance I was introduced by a friend to the Unistellar eVscope. I have to say this small but powerful scope has charged my batteries and got me going on deep-space observation again! Beyond the pictures, I will add to this site, is the possibility of contributing to the body of scientific knowledge.
Tracking an exoplanet
“It takes me back to my childhood, the day I learned about the discovery of the first exoplanet,” said Julien. “I was so excited, and never could I have imagined that it will one day be possible for me to detect an exoplanet myself!”
An excellent example of citizen science with the Unistellar
The Seti Institute press release at https://www.seti.org/citizen-astronomers-across-globe-partner-world-record-research-near-earth-asteroid
A more technical discussion of citizen science
Open source at : https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.09046.pdf