First Star I GPS Tonight
Emily Mathieu, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, May 06, 2006
If packed summer patios prove anything, it’s that Canadians love spending a night under the stars. But unless they’ve read up on astronomy (or astrology, for that matter), not many people know what they’re looking at.
Celestron, a California manufacturer of telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes and microscopes, has created a “personal planetarium.” The SkyScout is a hand-held GPS system designed to help the astrologically-challenged navigate the universe… Full Article Here
Here’s an excellent little example of connecting one or two technologies to make a result greater than the sum of its components. On the Web they’ve been generally calling this a “mach up”, a term I am not all too fond of, but it does seem to convey the message. This is a nice little “mash up” of astronomy and GPS.
In general, we here in North America are lagging far behind in the sciences (and yes my Canadian friends, you too are “Americans”, based on geography) If we want young people to go into scientific education (as opposed to just another MBA trying to learn Adsense arbitrage) then we have to do something to interest them at an early age. Astronomy/Astro Physics is one of the sciences were we have made many discoveries and do have outstanding scientists. How many more would we have today if we had “tempted their learning taste buds’ at an early age?
Very nice tool Celestron.