Revealed: First ever images of the moon captured by the DIY Pikon telescope - and you could PRINT your own at home for £100
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2765372/Revealed-Images-moon-captured-DIY-telescope-PRINT-home-100.html
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Incredible images showing the cratered surface of the moon are the first ever to be taken with a 3D printed telescope.
The £100 ($160) Pikon is able to produce images with a quality equal to telescopes that cost ten times as much, according to its designers.
And with plans available to download online, anyone can create the telescope themselves – as long as they own a 3D printer which costs at least £400 ($650).
Physicist Mark Wrigley, one of Pikon's creator, said he believed the telescope would be a 'game changer,' making telescopes available to the general public.
Pikon uses a £25 ($40) Raspberry Pi camera module and is based on Isaac Newton's reflecting telescope design.
The design involves placing a concave mirror to form an image of whatever the telescope is focused on directly onto the Pi camera sensor.
The camera is mounted onto components created by 3D printing and, due to its small size, can sit directly in front of the mirror.
The telescope has a magnification of times 160, which means that on a cloudless night it will be capable of detailed lunar observation as well as galaxies, star clusters and some planetary observation.
