Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Legacy Archives

Celestron SkyScout

By
Add as a preferred source on Google


Celestron, a manufacturer of telescopes and related type optical products, has combined a little twenty-first century technology with one of their latest stargazing devices. Not at all your dad?s telescope, the cool-looking Celestron SkyScout uses GPS to help you understand the night sky.

The SkyScout essentially works by aiming the device at a star in the sky and selecting the ?target? button for identification. The device is capable of locating over 6,000 stars, planets and constellations from a built-in database. If you?d prefer, you can also select a star or planet by choosing the object?s name from an onscreen menu and following directional arrows through the SkyScout?s viewfinder so that you can locate that object in the night sky.

Recommended Videos

Popular items seen in the night sky can be learned about through the SkyScout?s built-in ability to deliver audio and text information about what is being viewed. This information can include facts, trivia, history and mythology. This is on top of delivering a daily list of the 20 best objects to view based on one?s exact date, time and location anywhere in the world.

Celestron SkyScout

Moving beyond just these basic features, the SkyScout can provide an in-depth guided tour of selected constellations, including seeing an on-screen map of that constellation. It is also capable of providing a great deal of information about the field of astronomy, including a six part audio lesson on its origin and history, a glossary of popular astronomy terms and text on some of the greatest astronomers of all time.

Celestron SkyScout

The SkyScout is also capable of delivering information on man made space objects as well as selected comets. This is in addition to having a SD card slot for optional audio which provides additional entertainment and educational options to learn about the stars.

Physical features of the SkyScout, besides the SD card slot, also include a large display which is red LED-backlit, volume and brightness controls and rubber ?armoring? and a high-impact plastic body for outdoor use. It weighs around 15 ounces and is powered by two AA batteries. The Celestron SkyScout can be found for around $399.

Check out the company’s website for more information.

Andrew Beehler
Andrew Beehler
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Andrew Beehler has been with Digital Trends since 2009 and works with agencies and direct clients. Prior to joining Digital…
Topics
A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing
Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.
a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Read more
AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users
A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.
Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.

Read more
Etsy cracks down on AI slop listings. Everyone else needs to take note.
Now every platform must decide what counts as handmade.
Etsy featured image

Platforms tend to shrug off AI clutter until it threatens what they sell. For Etsy, that thing is trust in the maker.

To protect that, Etsy has banned AI-generated how-to guides and listings made entirely by bots. Most sellers must show at least one unretouched photo of the item (via Etsy Seller Handbook).

Read more