What do you think about this idea for a telescope?

Question

What do you think about this idea for a telescope? I've heard there are people who actually make their own telescopes for amateur astronomy. If that's true, here's one I think you should try. Maybe a telescope with a really low magnification (like a fish eye lense) so it can see the whole sky at once. That way it could be used to take pictures or videos of a meteor shower. What do you think?

Answer 1

look in the robert reeves book about wide field astrophotography for an example of such a camera, and pictures taken with it. it's really cool.

off-the-shelf fisheye lenses have been around for ages. you can photograph enormous areas of sky with them. good ones cost lots of money.

Answer 2

I like the idea, and your curious mind.

I wondered if someone had made such a thing so i did a quick search.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3597049...

Answer 3

Already been done and being done by people searching for meteorites.

Answer 4

Not sure about the engineering involved with it.  But, if it's used for still photography, you'd just have the star streaks (from the earth's rotation) and meteor streaks.  

If it's for video, though, it could be possible.  Either way, I'm not sure how well the final product would appear in print (cramming the entire sky onto an 8 x 11 could be a colossal mess, and likewise, putting the entire sky onto a t.v. or computer monitor is also quite condensed, but if you have a movie screen... hmmm?

I don't know, the idea has potential, but I have no clue about the quality, or what other uses it could have other than a surveillance...

Answer 5

The technical problems would be formidable, and it would have the distinct disadvantage of relatively low resolution.  The closest thing to what you have described which has been in use is called a Schmidt camera -- about which I know nothing more than the name.

Answer 6

You can go down to a store and pick up such a camera.  Canon makes a digital SLR that has a cooled CCD for long exposures, as for astrophotography.  Just put a fish eye lens on it.  Piggy back it to a telescope on a tracking mount, and take pictures from horizon to horizon.

Answer 7

Try Googling "fireball camera"

There are plenty of these all-sky cameras in operation around the world.