November 28, 2009, 12:00 am
Desktop astronomy has become more accessible over the last few years as hardware and software have come down in price. For an outlay not much greater than a top of the range PC it is possible to put together a CCD powered telescope that is more than adequate for hunting comets or prospecting for asteroids which are still popular pastimes among amateur astronomers. This optical hardware can be augmented by a substantial range of free software to process the raw images and guide amateur astronomers on where to look and what to see.
At a more prosaic level, anyone with an appropriately enabled smart phone can sit beneath the stars and view a labelled Google Sky Map that uses Android, GPS, compass data, date and time to fix your place on earth, and learn the names of the stars…
