Desktop astronomy has become more accessible over the last few years as hardware and software have come down in price. For an outlay not much greater than a top of the range PC it is possible to put together a CCD powered telescope that is more than adequate for hunting comets or prospecting for asteroids which are still popular pastimes among amateur astronomers.

If you are learning about the stars in school, an amateur sky watcher, or a meteorologist in the making you need to know your stars. To really see the stars you can visit a real planetarium, you can break out your serious telescope, or you can install and fire up a desktop application like Stellarium.

At SCALE 6x in February, one of the first things on the expo floor to grab my attention was the scaffolding of a large telescope jutting up towards the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The device belonged to the Linux Astronomy project, which built the entire system from scratch.