TopBanana wrote:

When do you think we'll see active optics filter down to amateurs? It
seems to be the most exciting thing happening in astronomy at the
moment.

Starlight Xpress already do one that is perfectly adequate for amateur
aperture scopes based on a tip-tilt corrector. You can also do offline
stack and add tricks for planetary images with a humble webcam.

On the subject a completely different technology, have there been any
initiatives to set up amateur telescope arrays? The proliferation of
broadband, telescope computer interfaces and incredibly powerful CPU's
for image processing could lead to some exciting results, I would
imagine. Do you think this would be feasible?

Sorry but optical telescope arrays are never going to be realistically
within the capabilities of amateur groups. The tolerances are far too
tight at optical wavelengths to do anything interesting without massive
engineering resources and temperature stabilised optical bunkers.

It might be possible for an amateur to repicate the Michelson & Pease
experiment to measure stellar diamters of the brightest stars. But even
that is doubtful - later and without Michelson (one the greatest
experimentalists of the last century), Pease couldn't make the kit work.

Regards,
Martin Brown