I beleive I'm familiar with the Aurora moniter. I read that article about the cosmic ray detector. Seems not to hard. But it might be posible to pick up cosmic rays on a semiconductor sensor.

On one ocation watching the shutle astronauts working on the ISS, I saw streaks of light crossing all over the tv screen. Those might have been cosmic rays. Some cosmic rays are more energetic than those produced at
CERN and Fermi Lab, but they are rather dilute.

Maybee, I'll look for Pinnacle, and for programer software at the Atmel site.
It should be a little easier to build a programmer as I was able to salvage a an 8 bit shift register IC circuit, yesterday. I built it a long time ago. It is now almost fully functional. It needs something like a one shot. Well, you get the idea.

As for the telescope, I'll go to astronomy center site or what ever it is, if I feel tike it.