Published Paper Details:

The optical surfaces of amateur astronomical telescopes tend to get cooler than the ambient temperature and thus have dew condensation on them which ruins the observation session and if not taken care of can also damage the optics. The problem of dew condensation is quite serious with refracting and catadioptric telescopes which have their front optics at the top end of the tube. The problem is not very severe with the primary mirrors of Newtonian telescopes as they are situated at the bottom of a long tube but the secondary mirror and finder scope (which by default is a small refracting telescope) are prone to fogging up with condensed water. The system that we have designed and tested is a smart dew removal system which is an optics heating system that does not need adjustments by the telescope user once powered on and adjusts the temperature of the heat belts as required by calculating the dew point and the tube temperature with the help of appropriate sensors. The system also has an IoT interface wherein it can push the parameters measured and temperature changes made to a server of a free IoT app called Blynk from where the user can monitor the same on his smart phone.