If You Can’t Name That Star, Try Asking Your Telescope

[Gerald]

LONGTIME stargazers learned the basics of the night sky the hard way — with pencils, star charts and lots of patience with their telescopes.

Now high-tech equipment and smartphone apps are making the task a lot less daunting for beginners.

New point-and-shoot telescopes, for example, require only the push of a button to go into action: Plunk one down in the driveway and the device gets its own bearings, aligning itself with the stars above so it can tell you that the twinkling light in the eyepiece is Betelgeuse.

Three models of these new, self-aligning telescopes, costing about $700 to $800, will be offered this July by Celestron. The company’s new line, called SkyProdigy, is intended for amateurs who don’t have in-depth knowledge of the night sky, or may not even have a clue of how to set up a telescope, said Danyal J. Medley, a principal engineer at the company in Torrance, Calif.

Even seasoned astronomy experts are heralding such automation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/bu...ml?ref=science

Note: April 9, 2011