The future of amateur astronomy

I'm just wondering what everybody thinks the future holds for amateur astronomy. I don't mean what will things be like 50 years from now, rather what they will be like 10-15 years from now. It seems that this hobby evolves at a very slow pace, so maybe things won't be that different, or maybe they will.

Will we see even larger telescopes? It seems right now that 30" dobs are the limit for amateurs. Will the coatings be more reflective? Wouldn't it be great if 10 years from now they came out with some super reflective coating that makes a 20" dob gather as much light as a 30" dob currently can.

What do you think the future holds? Be specific. Is there some breakthrough on the horizon?

Realistically, the greatest breakthrough that could happen in the next 10-15 years would be reducing light polution. But the odds of that happening seems very remote.

Coatings don't have that much room to improve in terms of reflectance. Light gathering goes with the square of the aperture, so even if you have 99.9% instead of 89% now (not even considering current enhanced coatings), you'll just get your 20" up competing with a 21.2" having 89% coatings. Perhaps non-metallic coatings will get low-stress enough to be used on curved substrates, making for a more durable and reflective coating (currently non-metallic dielectric coatings are pretty much only useful on flat substrates, and even then they warp the figure near the edge).

I can imagine some interesting advances in electronic eyepieces blurring the boundaries between visual and photographic astronomy.
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Mike

1) Continued price drops on telescopes for one thing. Even APO refractors have been dropping in price lately.

2) Better advancements in light pollution filters. Possibly a filter that gives the contrast of an Olll with the light throughput of a deep sky filter.

3) More affordable CCD cameras. Finding a better way to reduce noise without the cost involved in cooling the chip.

4) Obviously we've seen continued advancements in eyepieces year after year. That trend should continue.

5) People pleacing moor adds on astromort with tearible speelling airrs! :-)

How about large dobsonians clustered and aligned on a single mount, with images dynamically collimated in one eyepiece?

Three 24s would provide more light than a 40-inch, they would offer a much wider field for equivalent aperture, they would cost a tiny fraction what the 40-inch would cost, and you might even be able to figure out a way to make the whole thing portable. Probably have to arrive early to start your setup, though.

Steve