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"I'm strictly an ivory-tower person. I can explain things but I can't do things."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Lens Image | ||
| A presentation of the night sky, calculated for any planet or point in space. |
The key point about this is that it is not simply a planetarium, which has a fixed viewpoint - namely, the earth. The Lens Image is calculated anew for every presentation.
| The Lens was perhaps the newest feature of the interstellar cruisers of the day. Actually, it was a complicated calculating machine which could throw on a screen a reproduction of the night sky as seen from any given point of the Galaxy.
Channis adjusted the co-ordinate points and the wall lights of the pilot room were extinguished... Slowly, as the induction period passed, the points of light brightened on the screen... "This," explained Channis, "is the winter night-sky as seen from Trantor..." |
| Technovelgy from Second Foundation,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
You cannot yet (as far as I know!) buy a program or device that will let you calculate the night sky for anywhere in the Galaxy.
However, you can get software programs like Starry Night that will calculate the night sky view from the major planets of the solar system.
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
