What gear do professional astronomers use that is available commercially?

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Think about it: Hubble is down to one gyro, maybe two; Kepler is in safe mode; and today, the Chandra X-ray telescope went into safe mode; Spitzer has run out of coolant but still doing science – our fleet of space telescopes is getting older what are we replacing them with?

Bad news I’m afraid for the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been placed in safe mode as two of it’s critical gyros used for pointing have failed.

While imaging the Andromeda Galaxy, the Spitzer Space Telescope uncoverd a never-before-seen hole, the result of a collision with a nearby dwarf galaxy, in the Andromeda Galaxy.

NASA just launched the Parker Solar Probe, a mission designed to get the closest we’ve ever been to the Sun.

Why go through all the trouble and expense of buying and learning to use your own imaging equipment when you have access to ACTUAL Space Telescope data?

Time to talk about backyard observatories. Why? Observatories let you keep your telescope setup and aligned all the time