Portable telescopes inside the International space station (ISS)

[akerkarprashant]

TL;DR

Portable telescopes inside the International space station.

I would like to know what will be the visibility from the portable telescope aboard the International Space Station.

What could they potentially view, and what are (at least some of) the things they are known to have looked at?

Presumably they use it *inside* the ISS and not outside, and are therefore constrained by there needing to be a window providing access, to the sky, and the window should have good optical quality to preserve the resolution of the telescope?

 

[berkeman]

Do you have any links to information about this telescope that you can post?

 

[akerkarprashant]

Thanks.

No. General curiosity whether as we the Sky from ground level, with different telescopes, what could be the different views as seen from ISS (470 kilometres above Earth) with different telescopes?

 

[berkeman]

No.

Perhaps Google could help you find some links to post for us to read? Where did you first hear/read about this?

 

[sophiecentaur]

No. General curiosity whether as we the Sky from ground level, with different telescopes, what could be the different views as seen from ISS (470 kilometres above Earth) with different telescopes?

There would be no essential difference, apart from the elimination of atmospheric distortion and filtering replaced by the effects of a window glass in between.

If you look at the display that Stellarium will give you (that's a free planetarium program which everyone should have), that would give you the best idea of just how much the atmosphere spoils our view from Earth. (Stellarium allows you to turn it on and off). There are limitations to the application and the view through a good telescope on a good night will actually look different - smaller, sharper stars than even a good monitor will show and the magnitudes are not too convincing but you can always zoom in and out to get what you want. Learning to drive the App takes time so don't blame it until you are familiar with all the quirks.

Any telescope that could be taken on board for 'personal observations' would have to be pretty small and storable, away from ongoing work on ISS. All the same limitation for visual observing will be there and multiple, long photographic exposures will give much better results than you get in your garden. You would still need clever guiding to eliminate the problems as crew members wander around, doing their duties and the craft pitches and yaws during an exposure. Hubble and its smaller cousins doesn't have to deal with that; people in space can be a damn nuisance.