Summer is here and one of the things that many like to do in the summer time is look at the night sky. Astronomy has been a summer staple for decades and the best way to do it is with a telescope. Looking at the moon and other things in the night sky is cool.

Meade announced its new ETX-LS telescope is now shipping. The telescope is fully automated and uses LightSwitch technology to orient the telescope for viewing in the user’s specific location. The device also features a built-in speaker, video-out jack, and a multi-media Astronomer-inside that takes the user on a tour of the night sky.

Here’s an interesting image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s an image of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. Yes, it looks like the Firefox logo. The red area also resembles HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssesy.

I picture the starship Enterprise investigating and ultimately finding that this area of space is some higher beings hard drive. “I find this highly illogical Captain. Sensors are also picking up signs of Windows Vista, which indicates that the entire region is unstable and could implode at any time.”

Look through any typical amateur telescope at a clear night sky and you might be hard pressed to identify celestial bodies staring back at you. You can change that though with computerized help via the Celestron NexStar 4SE, available at Frontgate for around $600.

The Celestron NexStar 4SE is your typical looking telescope except for the small computer device attached to the side of it. You can use this to enter information such as time and location to help you actually point the scope at the right item in the sky. A database of different celestial bodies helps you pick out the one you are seeking.

You don’t necessarily have to be an astronomy master or space traveler in order to be able to identify the bright blinking spots in the sky. As an alternative to pouring through books you might be able to hack your way into celestial knowledge using this handheld telescope-like gadget from Celestron.

This camcorder sized gadget called the SkyScout can identify the objects you are looking at through the viewer and provide you information on what it is. It does this by combining various information to pinpoint over 6,000 different constellations, stars or planets in the sky. By using GPS to identify your location on the earth, a magnetic compass for the direction you are looking, gravity to get the angle of the physical SkyScout device and the current time it can identify pretty much exactly what you are seeing while looking through …

The ability to take pictures with your mobile phone was a great and popular advancement in mobile phone technology. The idea caught on like gangbusters and now you can hardly find a phone without a camera.

The progression of a telescoping lens for the mobile phone camera seems only natural, right? Well, maybe not. It does take away from having a slim design among other things, but this telescope that snaps on to Sony Ericsson mobile phones might be handy to have in your glove box.

The Mobile Phone Telescope from Brando adds 6x zoom to your camera. If your screen has good enough resolution you can manually focus the telescope lens while it is attached, but you may need to focus it before attaching to the camera which can be a little less than convenient.

For $19 USD, the package comes with …