A new type of telescope has made observing easier and accessible to a wider audience in a wider range of sky conditions. These scopes combine several modalities of previous scopes -- they consist of a small aperture telescope with a color camera that stacks short-exposure images and presents the final stacked image to the observer through a small screen built into an "eyepiece", through an app on the observer's phone, or through an app on their computer. These scopes are fully automated. They orient themselves and locate objects themselves, finding objects of interest from extensive databases. Some also offer opportunities to participate in collective campaigns to gather scientific data. This approach to observing is called electronically-assisted astronomy (EAA) and provides views that are better than those seen with the naked eye, even from suburban locations.

This month's speaker will be Richard Berry. He is an expert observer, a compelling speaker, a renown author, and the developer of a popular software package for astronomical image processing called AIP4Win. Richard has been exploring this new type of scope for quite awhile now and it will be very interesting to hear what he has learned.