The first picture made the world's first 3D-printed telescope Bashny.Net

You can spend a lot of money on a really cool Amateur telescope to be able to observe in detail what is happening, for example, on the moon, but a group of astronomers from the University of Sheffield were required to spend only a small portion of the potentially required amount and still achieve the desired result. The fact is that using a 3D printer, and the camera module of the Raspberry Pi, they were able to build a telescope that can create 5-megapixel images of the universe around us.

The project, dubbed the PiKon, designed to make the possibility of observing the night sky much more accessible for everyone.





"We hope that one day every lover of the night sky will be able to collect a telescope, similar in simplicity and convenience with the telescope Dobson, and for the first time to look deeper into space," says physicist Marc Riley.

"We want to make this technology accessible and cheap for ordinary people".

The PiKon telescope works similar to the reflective telescope: uses a concave mirror, which reflects the image into the phone. However, unlike conventional traditional Amateur telescopes, where possible, require the availability of another mirror, which will reflect the image in the eyepiece, the viewfinder is PiKon using cheap Raspberry Pi camera that captures a reflected image on the photo.







According to the blog Alternative Photonics, the company is working together with University researchers on this project is going soon to put on the website Thingiverse.com all the necessary documentation and diagrams that will be needed for the casting of a telescope on a 3D printer. Currently the first prototype of 3D-printed telescope show at the science exhibition of the Festival of the Mind in Sheffield.

Source: hi-news.ru