Photo by Doug Koontz Gary Hand tests out the Sky Scout Personal Planetarium, a device that will help locate the objects in the sky via GPS giving the operator directional aids to find the planet or stars.

The amateur astronomy and novice stargazer communities are going out of this world over the Celestron SkyScout, a handheld GPS stargazing device.

Want to find Orion, the Hunter? The Big Dipper? Mars? Jupiter? Just punch it in and look through SkyScout. Red LED lights guide the user to move it in the direction of the night sky toward the starry constellation. When you zero in on it, all eight LED lights blink to confirm location. Or, if you point it at a celestial object in the night sky and don't know what it is, punch the "identify" button and SkyScout will, verbally, name the object and provide a brief description. While SkyScout will locate a celestial object, the view is not magnified.

It weighs about a pound and fits in your hand. It uses a consumer-friendly point-and-shoot GPS technology that enables users to identify and/or locate more than 6,000 celestial objects viewable to the naked eye, including galaxies, nebulae and star clusters.

The technology combines data from sensors measuring both the magnetic and gravitational fields of the Earth, along with internal GPS and a celestial database. It also provides users with text and audio descriptions with history, mythology and other "entertaining information" for the most popular objects, great astronomers, man-made space objects and a glossary of astronomy terms. A USB port allows the database to be updated with new objects, such as comets, as they are discovered. The California-based company that markets SkyScout spent about five years developing it. The unit is powered by two AA batteries.

"The technology is definitely amazing for a $400 piece of equipment," said Todd Rosenfeld, owner of The Sky Plus in Mount Airy . "For people who go outside and see stars, they can try using a star chart, but this, you can point at anything (in the night sky) and it will tell you what it is."

Rosenfeld, who teaches astronomy at Centennial High School in Howard County and is working on his Ph.D. in astrophysics, said he hasn't been able to keep them in stock and has about a half dozen people on a waiting list for a SkyScout. "They've made such a splash with the amateur astronomy community. It's a lot more popular than I thought it would be."

Gary Hand has been an amateur astronomer for about 40 years and owns a telescope and optics store in Damascus called Hands On Optics. He said it takes something pretty unique in the industry to get him excited anymore. At last year's Consumer Electronic Show, where SkyScout was introduced, he "played" with it for about a half hour because "it was cool."

"This is a personal planetarium. There's absolutely nothing (else) like it on the market," said Hand, who just received a shipment. He's sold them to individuals, schools, groups and a foundation for "super bright but troubled kids. It's a great teaching tool. It's cool, especially if you are going to be out camping."

Hand said his customers who have purchased a SkyScout are "enjoying the heck out of it. It's an entertaining new way of finding things." SkyScout can also be attached to a telescope and used to navigate it in the direction of a specific object.

The gadget garnered National Geographic Adventure's "Best of Adventure" award, was named the "Best of What's New" by Popular Science magazine, was marked as one of Reader's Digest's "Best of America" gadgets, and was named the "Best of Innovations" in the personal electronics category at the annual showcase of consumer products.

"It's a very cool device," said amateur astronomer Jim May of Chewsville. He ordered a SkyScout before it was released and waited nine months to get it.

"The only thing that concerned me was the accuracy." He said he pointed it at the moon but the audio description was of another celestial body a few degrees away. "It really does have a lot of information," he said.

But May only had his SkyScout a few weeks. He sold it on eBay -- for a profit.

"It was nice," he said of the SkyScout. "But I decided I could do something better with the money."