Also, have you been able to establish the date of your little scope? Any idea of how it was marketed (if it was marketed) -- are there ads in S&T, etc. for such things back in the 50's? /R. From: Richard Tenney via Utah-Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 10:16 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 147, Issue 24 If an amateur was "enlisted", does this mean such a scope was given to them by the federal government, or enlisted as in "buy this little scope and help us defeat the Russkys!"? If the latter, how much did it cost for an interested party to help out? I'm also curious about the quality of the optics/workmanship (hard to tell from the photo). Regardless, thanks for sharing this bit of historical trivia Chuck! /R. From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 4:29 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 147, Issue 24 And we have a winner! This little telescope was sold for Operation Moonwatch, in which amateur astronomers worldwide were enlisted to help track artificial satellites and better determine their orbits. It was a direct result of Cold-War tensions at the time. Many different commercial variations of the little telescopes were sold, and plans were published for home-made versions, as well. Oriented north-south and with a scale to read-off altitude, teams would time when an artifical satellite would cross the meridian, and note it's elevation. The data was then given to the government who would refine the orbits of the Soviet and American satellites. Read more about the program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moonwatch I've wanted one of these little things for years and finally found one on eBay recently. My example is in very good, practically new condition, and is one of the smallest units marketed. Examples ranged from 30mm aperture up to nearly 5 inches. This one has a compass (still works amazingly well) as well as altitude and azimuth scales. All of the Moonwatch scopes used a mirror for a right-angle configuration, so operators could sit-down while using them. Some placed the mirror ahead of the objective and resembled a table-top microscope. Most commercial units, imported from Japanese companies, looked like my example. Pretty neat little piece of history. On 5/19/15, Stephen Peterson <scpki7l@gmail.com> wrote:
Scope used to track Sputnik?
Steve P
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