My friend and colleague Rick Fienberg, who is vice president of Galileoscope, LLC , has a cool project he and colleague Doug Arion of Carthage College started for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. It’s called the Galileoscope, and they have sold many, many of these easy-to-assemble telescopes at cost.
The Galileoscope Telescope kit. Courtesy Galilescope, LLC.
If you run a gift shop in a museum, planetarium, or other institution, you might want to think about stocking these useful and popular telescopes. When I first saw one of these scopes I was really impressed at how easy they were to put together and how well they allowed people to see things like lunar craters, the Jovian moons, the phases of Venus, and the Pleiades. These guys are donating all their labor and are only charging to cover the costs of the project.
The Galileoscope comes as a kit that takes only a few minutes and no tools to assemble. It’s perfect for classroom activities, group projects, etc.
Interested? Read what Rick has to say about terms and prices.
“We sell the Galileoscope wholesale in cases of six at $25 per kit ($150 per case) plus shipping. Our dealers are selling Galileoscopes at retail prices between $49.95 and $59.95. Most are also leveraging the kit to sell other products, for example by bundling it with accessories such as tripods and star maps.
Galileoscopes are also useful in your education and outreach programs; we even provide economical and convenient training via our Galileoscope Workshops. Further support for the Galileoscope is provided through TeachingWithTelescopes.org, a website from the science educators at the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
If you carry the Galileoscope in your shop, we will link to your website from our home page to refer customers your way. Please let me know if you have any questions, need more information, or want me to send you a sample Galileoscope kit. Thanks for your consideration.”
One of the most visible parts of the International Year of Astronomy is the Galileoscope. It’s a high-quality telescope that gives a viewer about the same view that astronomer Galileo Galilei had in 1609. If that sounds a bit “meh” in these times of mega-scopes and super-GOTO mounts and the Web, consider this: most kids (and adults, really) have never looked through any kind of telescope. The most contact with the sky a lot of people have is maybe glancing up at the stars as they go outside to the car at night, or they search out something on the Web for the kids’ science fair project.
The Galileoscope.
The Galileoscope gives everybody a chance to have the experience of looking through a telescope and seeing something in the sky that they have never seen before in just that way. And, there’s a LOT to be said for that experience. It’s like the difference between seeing a picture of an apple and eating one. Or, the difference between reading a play in lit class or actually seeing and hearing it performed live. Or, the difference between watching someone hug someone else or hugging someone yourself.
The scope (which you can see above) is easy to put together. The best part is, it only costs $15.00. Now, you’ve probably seen (and heard) me and others with our mantra of “cheap scopes aren’t worth it.” Well, there’s cheap and then there’s cheap. If you think of department store scopes with wobbly mounts and crappy lenses, then yeah, that’s cheap. But, while this scope is inexpensive (money-cheap), it has been put together by folks (Rick Fienberg, former editor of Sky & Telescope, Steve Pompea, Hans Hansen and others) who were able to insist on really high-quality work — and it shows. It lets you look at the Moon and Jupiter and a number of other easily found objects. It lets a viewer have that “Galileo moment” that changed everything for astronomy.
There are already a number of educational packets put together to help teachers whose students are putting these together as class optics projects. And, the best part is, they’re easy to use and they really DO give people a real experience at sky viewing. And, since astronomy is one of those sciences that really hooks people — it’s a leg up into a real learning experience at any age.
So, check it out. You can buy as many as you want at $15.00 each — at that price you could buy some for yourself and your family and maybe get one or two to donate to local schools or children’s groups. Give the gift of the sky to yourself and others! Let’s get a scope in every backyard, every schoolyard, and as many street corners as we can!
