One Telescope Per Child

An anonymous reader writes "It seems one-<object>-per-child goes beyond laptops. A project from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has designed a high-quality, $20 telescope they're calling the Galileoscope, hoping to spark interest in astronomy among kids and make good scopes available to many who otherwise could not afford one. But as OLPC learned, it's not that easy; they are struggling to get enough volume to get production ramped up and costs down, resorting to tricks like auctioning off a few autographed ones, and trying Give-One-Get-One."

Comments

Re:Kids will be bored

[Colonel Korn]

Noble intentions indeed.
Call me a skeptic, but when you can get a basic refractive telescope plus tripod (which will easily cost more than the scope itself) for under $40 I'm not exactly enthusiastic about this. And when kids find out that all they can do is look at the moon and get headaches, they'll learn one thing: Astronomy without super-expensive equipment is boring.

Even with only your eyes and the night sky, astronomy isn't boring. It requires effort, however. Sure, most kids may not care about the sky. But like most interests, it becomes more engrossing as more effort is put into it. Go outside at midnight every night, sit on a roof, and sketch the sky. Learn the names of the things you can see, figure out when they'll be where, watch the planets move, look up notable events like meteor showers.

Now go buy a good pair of 10x50 binoculars. Look at the Orion Nebula. It's easy to find and it's cool. Now go looking for Messier objects. Andromeda's a good choice - it's quite visible in binos even in a city like San Jose on the right night, but it takes a little effort to find at first. Work your way to more difficult objects. Learn what they are. Learn what they do.

There's as much to keep you, or a kid, entertained in astronomy as there is in anything else. It just takes some effort, and after the night sky sketching it will likely be fun all the way. Or it may not be for you, but it doesn't hurt to try.