dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (08/12/84)
Amateur astronomers are planning to launch their own space telescope. We'll talk more about plans to place telescopes above the Earth's atmosphere -- after this. August 5 The Amateur Space Telescope Two years from now NASA plans to place a large Space Telescope in orbit above our atmosphere -- giving professional astronomers a chance to see the universe better than ever before. Even with full-time use, though, there's just too little time and too few telescopes -- both in space and on Earth -- to make all the observations astronomers would like to have of various celestial objects. Amateur astronomers provide valuable services in filling this observational gap -- and in a few years the amateurs may have access to their own space telescope. The Amateur Space Telescope -- sponsored by the Independent Space Research Group of Troy, New York or I.S.R.G. -- is being built by university students and faculty and other volunteer labor. With the right equipment anyone on Earth will be able to receive pictures and data from the Amateur Space Telescope. I.S.R.G. is already accepting proposals for project time on the orbiting observatory. The builders hope to piggyback the satellite onto an already scheduled NASA launch to get it into space. That situation is not new -- over twenty years ago ham radio operators built their own communications satellite and had it launched by a similar method -- and at least a dozen other such communication satellites have been constructed over the years. Meanwhile, an eighteen inch mirror has been already been donated -- and the Amateur Space Telescope is hoped to be off the ground and functioning in space by 1986. Script by Diana Hadley. Amateur Space Telescope Nears Completion, Ray Grasshoff, Astronomy, March 1984. Telephone conversation with Jesse Eichenlaub, President, I.S.R.G., P.O. Box 1246, Troy, New York (6-14-84) (c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin