Rik's monolithic Cassegrains are the perfect example of the blend of amateur and high-end professionnal work in astronomical optics, thanks for linking it ! His amateur work is incredible, like this 16" CDK : https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/558284-a-400-mm-f1...

Dayyum, those shots are incredible! I've seen worse pictures from professional telescopes.

This coming year ... if the crik don't rise (as it does with some regularity). Some of you may be able to take a picture of yourself with one of Ril ter Horst lenses as it will be launched in a 2U cubesat named OreSat1 by Oregon's Portland State University undergrads.

https://www.oresat.org/home

pictures would be captured by hand held groundstations

https://www.oresat.org/technologies/ground-stations

This is the commercial company he's now CTO at.

https://www.tinytelescope.com

Nice video, except it could use some, you know, actual images made by the lens they talk about.

Its the usual Youtube thing where there's multiple videos. The one linked is the bibliography popular science utterly non-technical spin. There's a three part technical series, a fun two hours viewing, and the end of the third technical video goes has some performance shots. It performs really well for a tiny little thing, like per gram or per cubic centimeter the performance is excellent. Its a cool technology and when I saw it I immediately wondered if it would be possible to make a microscope the same way out of single solid cylinder of glass. I don't think so; but it would be cool. It would also make an interesting, although probably very expensive, binocular technology.

Catadioptric telescopes are in fact sometimes configured and sold as long (working) distance microscopes: http://www.company7.com/questar/microscope.html Not made out of a single piece of glass, though, which is one of the things that's so elegant about Rik ter Horst's design.

Came here to link this, but you beat me to it :)

You both beat me. :D