Capstone Team 9 Intelligent Telescope: A Novel Approach

The goal of this project is to build a prototype intelligent telescope that can track objects in the sky via a catalog and adjust according to the Earth’s location and rotation. This telescope would use a different method of tracking than those used by current telescopes, and that method would make it a cheaper alternative than intelligent telescopes currently on the market. Instead of using a high powered camera to navigate using a guide star, we will use a combination of accelerometers and magnetometers in conjunction with encoders and a GPS to create a sort of “absolute encoder” that will allow us to determine the absolute position at any time and then determine pointing to a high accuracy with the encoders.