Video the week --- The Celestron SkyProdigy.

The Celestron SkyProdigy is a revolutionary line of three new telescopes, recognized as an Innovations Honoree at the 2011 CES. They’re designed for people without any prior knowledge of astronomy or telescopes.  All you have to do is turn any of three telescopes on and watch as the SkyProdigy “looks” up to the nighttime sky to get its bearings. In less than three minutes you can take an exciting tour of outer space using SkyProdigy’s internal database of over 4,000 celestial objects. (The built in digital camera is for internal use only and there’s no digital output. I thought about that too and got the answer.) The integrated imaging camera and patented StarSense Technology to automatically align with the night sky and determine where the telescope is currently pointing. The camera automatically captures an image of the sky, which is processed internally to positively identify the stars in the image. Once a positive match is found, SkyProdigy determines the coordinates of the center of the captured image. The process is automatically repeated two more times so that the system has three known alignment points that can be used to make an accurate model of the night sky. From this information the user can select any celestial object in the hand controller’s database, and SkyProdigy will automatically move itself to the correct position. 3 models from $699.00 to $799.

Ben from Celestron explains what this amazing telescope can do:

http://youtu.be/9_gTltZ-31Q

http://www.celestron.com/c3/category.php?CatID=122

See or hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1320