Telescopes and astronomy

[BoySanic]

Description

I think it would be very neat to make multiblock telescopes.

Potentially for astronomy (which could be fun - magic systems that depend on the constellations and identifying them (which could be randomized per-world), could also be a way of looking at far away features and having them rendered as if they're closer when viewed through the telescope.

The astronomy system overall I imagine could be one method for players to gain some form of magic ability. Perhaps they can discover magic properties for the stars in the sky by studying them with telescopes. The bigger your telescope, and the less atmospheric abberation, the clearer the image and the further away you can see.

I imagine we could do both refractor and reflector telescopes. Would necessitate some kind of material to act as a "mirror" though.

Reflector: Proof of concept - two convex lenses and one concave lens:

(light provided to see the structure more easily)B Just as in real life, the length of the telescope and the lens configuration determine how much light is collected and how clear distant objects appear.

We would have a number of lens configurations that can do different things.

Most of the lenses would be convex, to focus the light to a single point. Then the final lens would be concave as the eyepiece.

For example, colored glass can filter out wavelengths of light we don't want.

Maybe atmospheric abberation gets in the way and we're incentivized to find a way to build telescopes higher and higher (maybe at 48,000, the air is gone and you'll suffocate without breathing equipment?)

Reflector telescopes would be the next step up from refractor. Refractor telescopes tend to be weaker than reflector, and they'd be the logical thing to build later game.

I'll work on these ideas more to flesh them out. But, here's the initial idea.