One of 100 hours of astronomy, or how I looked at Saturn
Yesterday, April 2, the project of 100 hours of astronomy was launched , within which any Internet user can receive remote control of the telescope of one of the participating observatories for free before April 5: in the USA, Canada, Australia or Italy.
List of observatories and instructions
By the way, today, April 3, scheduled webcasts from the world's leading observatories, 24 hours non-stop.
The schedule is here
(UPD: the servers are overloaded, as one would expect, errors pop up, but yesterday there was a schedule and links. In general, you can get to webcasts from other pages of the site)
True, not all of them provide real-time control, at the Harvard Observatory, for example, you can only leave a request for a specific space phenomenon or object. The employees of the center will process it within 48 hours and will send a link to the left email address where you can download a photograph taken by the telescope according to your application.
I managed to try to control the Canadian telescope, and despite the fact that I am a complete layman in this, I received great pleasure.
And that’s what I saw.
The observatory has three telescopes, their characteristics do not tell me anything at all, so I relied on a random choice. When registering, you get free credits for the purchase of time using the telescope (free within the project, for these 4 days) and you can book the time, focusing on the local time zone and forecast of meteorological conditions.
When your time comes, you connect to the session and through the applet gain control over the focusing of the telescope and two cameras that allow you to take photos. It takes some time to get to know the functions, but on the whole everything is pretty clear and even allows a layman to take some kind of picture of a celestial body :)
Saturn, for example, a
photo of a telescope with a camera installed in the observatory
Communication with employees
Interface
As you can see from the pictures, the opera is well supported.
In general, everything is very interesting, and the hour of my time flew by completely unnoticed.
List of observatories and instructions
By the way, today, April 3, scheduled webcasts from the world's leading observatories, 24 hours non-stop.
The schedule is here
(UPD: the servers are overloaded, as one would expect, errors pop up, but yesterday there was a schedule and links. In general, you can get to webcasts from other pages of the site)
True, not all of them provide real-time control, at the Harvard Observatory, for example, you can only leave a request for a specific space phenomenon or object. The employees of the center will process it within 48 hours and will send a link to the left email address where you can download a photograph taken by the telescope according to your application.
I managed to try to control the Canadian telescope, and despite the fact that I am a complete layman in this, I received great pleasure.
And that’s what I saw.
The observatory has three telescopes, their characteristics do not tell me anything at all, so I relied on a random choice. When registering, you get free credits for the purchase of time using the telescope (free within the project, for these 4 days) and you can book the time, focusing on the local time zone and forecast of meteorological conditions.
When your time comes, you connect to the session and through the applet gain control over the focusing of the telescope and two cameras that allow you to take photos. It takes some time to get to know the functions, but on the whole everything is pretty clear and even allows a layman to take some kind of picture of a celestial body :)
Saturn, for example, a
photo of a telescope with a camera installed in the observatory
Communication with employees
Interface
As you can see from the pictures, the opera is well supported.
In general, everything is very interesting, and the hour of my time flew by completely unnoticed.