Golf and Stars – Celestron at CES
January 5, 2011
Some of the fun stuff I saw last night at Unveiled included GPS devices from Celestron. They’re bringing tracking devices to market for people who might be hiking in deserted areas and folks who are spending time on the golf course.
According to the reps at the booth, the company has new products in both the GPS-enabled category in the optical line. Their press materials also boast a 360-degree photography panorama gadget/telescope.
To that end, here are the company blurbs on a few of those devices…
reTrace Lite – $49 and reTrace Deluxe – $99 – is an easy-to-use GPS device helping travelers, campers, sports and outdoor enthusiasts, joggers and others not get lost. The reTrace GPS is a personal locator with a built-in digital compass that measures the distances to waypoints a user sets to find their way back to a target location. reTrace works anywhere in the world where a GPS signal can be received. The device also features an altimeter, barometer, temperature and real time display.
The SkyWatcher AllView – $449.95 – is a computerized mount that simplifies taking panoramic photos and videos. It automates the process of capturing numerous photo or video frames that are necessary to stitch together a large panorama shot. The AllView can also be used to take astronomy photos by combining the pointing precision of a product designed for astronomy use with a camera shutter control feature to make creating panoramic photography an easier task. The quick release dovetail system makes the AllView compatible with any telescope or spotting scope equipped with Celestron SkyWatcher’s 1.75″ wide dovetail.
Another item they had on hand was the Golf GPS called CoursePro which lets you measure where you are on the golf course to make club selection and course management easier. My thought is that this is better than lugging a Droid or iPhone GPS app around, mostly because golfers really frown upon ringing phones in their backswing.
More cool stuff to come while I’m here at the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 in Las Vegas.
