We've seen home automation touchpanels used for some -- shall we say, unorthodox -- activities, but this is taking things to another level galaxy. Franklin, NC-based Dan Quigley has whipped up a way for his WiFi-enabled Crestron TMPC8X to actually control a giant telescope. Rather than manually getting the 'scope into the right position, he simply touches a button and watches it automatically check to see "if and when that object is viewable." While he's at it, he can dim the lights around him and check the local weather, and once a celestial body is in view, he can snap a photograph or have the system channel the image to any computer / TV. Suddenly, astronomy has become entirely more attractive.

[Thanks, Chuck]

We've seen these zoom lens add-ons before. Now Brando's slapped together this 6x "Telescope" for the iPhone 3G -- a phone not exactly revered for its image quality. Just snap the unit to the back of the iPhone 3G and get to work. How good is it? About as bad as the $19 worth of optics within. Seriously, 19 bucks and available now.

The folks at SETI@home have put out a desperate plea for the community to bust out those quill pens and start writing strongly-worded letters to congress persons. Apparently the Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope and SETI@home's data source, is being threatened with some massive budget cuts. Given that a replacement for Arecibo won't be online until 2020 at best, folks are understandably upset. Turns out Arecibo is also one of the best shots we have at detecting an earth-threatening asteroid before it's too late and we have to sit through another Elijah Wood movie on the subject. You know what you have to do.

[Thanks, Brian]

Don't get too excited -- that image you see to the right isn't actually a transatlantic telescope. Rather, it's a transatlantic broadband network "rounded off on each end with HD cameras." Still, the 11.2- x 3.3-meter Telectroscope is a real marvel to look at, and it actually does enable viewers in New York and London to peer at each other in real-time. The creation will be on display and open to the public around the clock in both cities until June 15th, so if you've been meaning to ask for that dame's hand in marriage but couldn't afford the JFK - LHR ticket, why not set up a surprise meeting at the 'scope?

The currently terrestrial Bill Gates and his former (and space-faring) Microsoft colleague, Charles Simonyi, have donated a cool $30m to a project that aims to build "the world's largest survey telescope" (cleverly) called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. On Thursday, the group said that Gates and Simonyi had donated $10m and $20m respectively to help develop the telescope, which Gates says "is truly an Internet telescope, which will put terabytes of data each night into the hands of anyone that wants to explore." The 8.4-meter telescope, which sports three large mirrors and three refractive lenses, will be built on a mountain in northern Chile and is scheduled to decimate the magic of your astronomy club in 2014.

If you've been strangely itching to get a closer look at the Sun without totally ruining your eyesight, you can color yourself quite fortunate. The aptly-named Sunrise project is an international collaboration involving a number of institutions that have successfully sent a jumbo-jet sized balloon some 120,000 feet high with a solar telescope riding shotgun. The plan is to send the massive device on lengthy journeys beginning in 2009 "that will capture unprecedented details of the Sun's surface," and furthermore, it could enable scientists to launch instruments up for testing without having to strap them onto a rocket and consequently destroy their budget. Set to take flight in the summer of '09 from Kiruna, Sweden, the balloon is scheduled to "capture continuous images for a period of several days to as long as two weeks," and no, you can't buy a seat on this one.

[Via Physorg]

Roger Angel's idea to launch a 100-meter liquid mirror telescope on the moon is far from the only mammoth-sized dream that could be headed into space, and if the feasibility study shows enough promise, it just might happen. The University of Arizona astronomer mentioned that the idea of putting an "enormous liquid-mirror telescope on the moon that could be hundreds of times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope" had been around awhile, but apparently it's finally getting the attention it deserves. If constructed, it would easily be the largest ever built, and would reportedly allow scientists to "study the oldest and most distant objects in the universe, including the very first stars." The project is being investigated on behalf of NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, and while these type devices are "relatively cheap" to build, it should be noted that it's being compared (at least financially) to the $4.5 billion James Webb Space Telescope. Now, where's the signup sheet for freelance contractors to get in on the moon-based build process?

[Via Wired]

That space telescope of space telescopes, NASA's Hubble, has suffered a serious setback this Saturday, and may never recover. The ACS (advanced camera for surveys), the main camera on the telescope, which was installed in 2002 and multiplied discovery capability by 10, has entered "safe mode," and NASA has little hope of a fix. A final shuttle-based repair mission is planned for 2008, but NASA already has a good bit on its to-do list, and since the ACS is such a complicated fix, it doesn't look like the Hubble will have use of its main camera for the rest of its duration in space. "In order to access the box cover and restore capability we would need to turn off the cooling system, and disconnect connections to the control module. It's a big job, the area is pretty limited; we are already challenged enough to do the other repairs and this spacewalk would be considerably more labor-intensive." Said Preston Burch, Hubble associate director at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Upgrades that will happen include new nickel hydrogen batteries, a couple of gyroscopes for locking on to targets, along with a new wide-field camera, "cosmic origins spectrograph," guidance sensor and outer protective layer. This should at least keep the Hubble running until 2013, and by then the Webb should be launched to replace the aging Hubble. Five back-to-back spacewalks will be required to fix the Hubble, but some say it's worth the risk to "save the Hubble," so perhaps NASA will figure out a way to squeeze it in by the 2008 flight.

[Via MetaFilter]

We're rather impressed with the US Air Force and their Starfire project. It's not every day you get to build a death ray on a desert hill in New Mexico and write it off as a scientific endeavor. The premise is that since the atmosphere diffracts light, messing up the view of ground-based optical telescopes, the Starfire shoots a laser 56 miles into the mesosphere and measures the distortion to adjust the telescope optics. Images from the Starfire are 40 times more accurate than regular, but the laser technology is coincidentally multi-purpose: "We don't hide the fact that it could help build an anti-satellite weapon," says the installation's chief, "if you choose to do it." Our thoughts exactly.

Don't expect to see one of these in a commercial DSLR anytime soon (especially now that Mamiya has left the game), but a division of DALSA Semiconductor has successfully manufactured and delivered a 111 megapixel image sensor that's only been topped on these pages by the 500 megapixel monster inside Fermilab's Dark Energy Camera. Putting even the highest-resolution bacteria-based cam to shame, the new 4-inch-square CCD features an array of 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, and was developed in conjunction with Semiconductor Technology Associates to aid the U.S. Naval Observatory's Astrometry Department in precisely determining the position and motion of celestial objects. While you probably can't afford to hire DALSA to build another one of these just for you, there's at least one option on the market that will give you the hundred-plus megapixel bragging rights you seek without breaking the bank: Better Light's 144 megapixel E-HS medium format backing, which, while technically only capturing 48 megapixels per color (and taking at least 66 seconds to do so), should still be enough to impress even your EOS 1Ds Mark II-sporting friends.