PANOPTES at Stellafane and Beyond

My son and I went to Stellafane 2017 in July, where I had entered my PANOPTES scope in the Mechanical Competition; the other competition at Stellafane is for telescope optics, but the PANOPTES design uses off-the-shelf cameras and lenses... thank goodness.

While I was setting up on the competition field, chatting with my neighbors, I learned that I wasn't the only one that had set Stellafane as a personal deadline. Apparently it is pretty common for telescopes to be (almost) finished the day before the competition; like many, among my reasons for entering the competition was provide a deadline and, of course, to give me the chance to share my passion with like-minded folks. It certainly helped me stay focused during the 3 months of the build leading up to Stellafane (I signed on to Project PANOPTES in April after hearing about it at NEAIC and NEAF from Josh Walawender).

The roots of the Stellafane Convention are in the building of telescopes, especially the mounts, and some of the winners in the past have made truly beautiful scopes, with wonderful wooden frames or shiny brass clock drives. My "mechanical" entry was really about the electronics and the entire assembly, so pretty far off from the norm I suspect, and certainly there was nothing else like it this year. So, you can understand my surprise and delight when I learned that my entry had won an award in the "Special" category of the Mechanical Competition.

On the day of the competition, I spend 4 hours showing off the scope, sharing my enthusiasm for Project PANOPTES's exoplanet survey with lots of people, and was exposed how hard it can be to explain the goal of a project or design of an instrument. By far the number one question was "Why does your scope have two cameras?", followed by "Does it see in 3-D?". I'll work on answering that in detail in another post, but the short answer is economics: it is simply a cheaper way to get more light onto camera sensors than it would be if we had a single camera with a larger diameter lens, by at least hundreds of dollars, if not a thousand.

Among those who spent some time chatting with me about PANOPTES was a faculty advisor for the Astronomy Club at Mount Wachusett Community College. The college has a grant from NSF's S-STEM program for promoting an educated work force, which aims to go beyond just financial aid, providing personal and group support such as mentors and enrichment programs. Among the latter, they invite in outside speakers to talk to the group about their educational and career experiences. I'm now scheduled to speak to the group on September 18th; I'll share my somewhat rocky road through school and greater success at work (I'm better at learning by doing, or at least when sufficiently engaged), and the fun I've had building a PANOPTES scope. I've also been invited to give a brown bag talk at MIT about PANOPTES and the scope I've built for it.

Another pleasure that I garnered from working on PANOPTES is the new relationships with folks in New England and farther afield, many of whom have volunteered their experience and some have spent time helping me advance the build. I'm especially grateful to Noel Qiao, a neighbor who helped greatly with, among other tasks, preparing the Pelican case for hosting the electronics; and John Blomquist who has recently been instructing me in machining at the ATMoB clubhouse, helping me with fabricating the aluminum pier to which the mount is secured.

Soon after those talks, where I'll have the PANOPTES scope for show-and-tell, I'm planning on installing it at Wheaton College, in Norton, MA, where the astronomy professor, Dr. Maitra, has generously offered the scope a temporary home in one of their domes. This is especially nice as it allows me to delay the weatherproofing of the mount, an operation that is pretty much one-way... once weatherproofed, you can't get at the motors, polar scope, etc.

More to come soon.