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Live remote control of a telescope is really quite easy with
MyTelescope.com, even if the telescope is on the other side of the planet!
And we do try to create the experience of being right there at the
observatory under a starry night sky with the Milky Way in plain view.
It's hard to describe so we'll let
some of our screen shots
tell the story!
Getting Started:
There's only a few things to do to get started on your own live remote control
experiences:
-
First you will need to register and purchase viewing credits for your
account. Viewing credits are how you pay for your telescope time. On a 10
inch telescope, an hour uses about 10 credits which translates to
between us$10.50 and us$15.00, depending on which observing package you purchase
and which discount are applied.
-
Next you reserve your telescope time on the ``Book Live Control'' page
- it takes just a few minutes to become familiar with the booking process.
-
When your observing session begins you get live remote control of the
telescope using our "Live-Mode Telescope Control Applet".
To become familiar with this live mode applet, you can read
instructions that we provide on the member web pages
and you can also book practice sessions during the daytime.
This will take approximately 30 minutes or less depending on your
astronomy background.
After a practice session most people are ready to go!
Before you begin we want to provide you with some general information about
our service:
Our Time Zone:
Our telescopes are in eastern Canada (GMT - 4 hours). It is important to
know the differences between our time zone and where you live because it
determines when during your day you can use the telescopes during their
night.
To help you with this our booking page visually indicates the day
and night times at the telescope site.
It also displays the corresponding time where
you live based on the timezone you provide when you register.
Weather at the Telescope Site:
Our first telescope site is located in New Brunswick, Canada.
This has been our development site
since we first installed telescopes a few years ago. The telescopes are in
an area where the sky is very dark - you can often see the milky way with the
spotting cameras that are installed on each telescope.
But we don't control the weather and although we have experienced excellent
seeing conditions at the site, eastern Canada does get a healthy dose of
precipitation, and it is difficult to predict more than a few days in
advance what the weather will be like. We mention this so that people are
aware that some of their advance bookings will experience weather cancellations.
Fortunately most amateur astronomers understand this from their own
experience! Many of us have gone to a star party only to see the clouds move
in just when you were about to get started! The good news is when there are
weather cancellations, your viewing credits are refunded to your account.
The other good news is when the weather is clear, the imaging can be superb!
Our Equipment:
We currently have several 10" Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes in operation. We
designed and built our own mounts, controllers and drive system.
The primary cameras
use a Sony Hyper Had progressive scan cooled CCD, with 1300x1030 pixels. Each
telescope is equipped with a filter wheel with 7 positions: they are red,
green, blue, IR-block, neutral density, blank and opaque. Each telescope is
equipped with a temperature compensating focuser, a spotting camera and a dew
remover.
To get started click the Join Now button!
If you'd like more details on how to use MyTelescope.com before
you join, they are available in the
Getting Started Steps,
but you won't be able to access some of the pages mentioned there until
you've joined.
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