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Night-time sky binoculators


Here is a device I would like to see invented:

Many times I will take walks in the middle of the night. I love looking up at the stars. I imagine how cool it would be to own a pair of binoculars that I could carry with me. I point the binoculars up at a star I see and wondering about it. In the display in the binoculars you would see the star and the stars around it. But overlapping that (using 50% reflective mirror I suppose) would be a computer display with details on the star (with a line pointing to the star that would be continually updated to point to it as the image of the star will be shifting around as you view it). Whatever we know about it currently. Its name, distance, class, type whatever*. The binoculars would contain a computer that would be connected into the internet and would poll the information this way (Or it could just update internal memory regularly with the data). If I point these binoculars at a planet, it would give me all the juicy details of that planet at the current time. Perhaps show a graphic of the current layout of the planets in the solar system. Maybe if you pointed it at Mars, besides all the other typical planetary data, it could give you a current weather report from the planet, since we have so many robots on the surface and even satellites circling the planet. I would also like this thing I am imagining to be able to identify anything you can see up there. If I see a tiny white dot moving across the sky, I want to be able to point this at it and it would identify whether this is some late-night flight (it could give flight number, origination point and destination and stuff like that) or a possible satellite circling the earth, and would give the name of the satellite, orbital parameters, etc. Or if it was the ISS it would identify that and give info on that, such as who is currently occupying it, etc.

* Ok, forget about that. I just looked up one star on Wikipedia, and there is just too much information. So I guess this device would have to limit things to just a restricted set of data.

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Already done.

A friend demonstrated a beautiful app on his Ipad that clearly showed the stars he was pointing his ipad camera at, then overlaid it with constellations and names.

I have a free android app on my tablet that works OK but not so cleanly. It has varying levels of detail, including a night view option with red light only. I use it to identify planets and learn some of the constellations and bright stars. I expect if I purchased a better quality app it would work better.

My Lumia phone running Win 8.1 also has a free star app that works like sh!t.



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