AI and the Smart Telescope: How Both May Change Amateur Astronomy: The St. Louis Astronomical Society February Meeting

The advent of the smart telescope is a clear signal of the upcoming technological disruption into the amateur astronomy field. The next generation of smart telescopes, if this technological disruption evolves, will not only do what they do today but soon will be able to integrate AI (real artificial intelligence) into these smaller formats. Powerful and cheaper CPUs, NPUs and faster WiFi (network and satellite communications) will enable your smart telescope to join and use large databases of DSOs in real time and share your work more widely, allowing you to join international amateur scientists to assist professional astronomers in real time as you image and track a DSO as well as produce augmented reality visuals and high quality images. Your personal devices become your displays and controllers with an app.

Jesus Alberto Ponce de Leon is a member of the St. Louis Astronomical Society, of the Astronomical Association of Southern Illinois, the Springfield Astronomical Society of Missouri. He taught technology and innovation, international business and strategic management at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL. He also taught business in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore for more than 10 years. He has been retired from academia since 2012. 

The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. The public is invited to attend its meetings, telescope observing sessions, and special events. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org.

Free parking will be available.

Header image: An artist's illustration shows that the stars in the TOI 1338 system make an eclipsing binary — they circle each other in our plane of view. If you could hover near the planet TOI 1338 b, you would see an eclipse every 15 days. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA)