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Development of the Astroscan wide-field Newtonian |
Norm Sperling |
Thursday, Jul 9, 2015 at 8:00 PM |
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This month, Norm Sperling will cover some of the history and background of the development of the popular Astroscan telescope. The Astroscan is a wide-field Newtonian reflector telescope produced by the Edmund Scientific Corporation. It was designed by Norman Sperling and Mike Simmons to be used as an introductory telescope. Rather than using a more traditional equatorial or alt-azimuth mount the Astroscan features a spherical housing around the primary reflector which sits in a cast aluminum cradle. The design is durable and allows for simple operation by novice amateur astronomers; it won an Industrial Design Award in 1976.
Speaker Bio
Norman Sperling is an author, editor, publisher, teacher, and telescope designer living in San Mateo, California.
Sperling received a BA from Michigan State University after graduating from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He followed that with an MA in History of Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught astronomy and related courses at Sonoma State University, California State University, Hayward, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. He has also taught many personal interest adult classes.
As an inventor, Sperling created, with Mike Simmons, the Astroscan telescope for Edmund Scientific, as well as "The Stars Above" star-finder for Spherical Concepts.
Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting. |
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