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Ultimate Webcam: Rent Time On A CCD Telescope
leighklotz writes "I saw an ad for this in Science News and visited the site: http://www.arnierosner.com offers CCD-based telescopes that you control, from his mountaintop in Arizona. $50 for an hour's tiem gets you started. Too bad I hadn't read this last week when Saturn's rings were at their peak." I bet this gives some entrepreneurial ideas ...
Leonid shower
Through a telescope?
Maybe if he set up some wide angle lenses or something.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I believe he's in the Benson area. I live in Tucson, and I checked his map coordinates... my city mapbook stops east at 110 E 24 M which is about Mescal, seven miles west of Benson. There is, by the way, a Bed & Beakfast in Benson that caters to starwatchers. I figure he's on the east side of the San Pedro River. Great spot. Not that the skywatching in Northern AZ sucks at all, either. Get a bit away from the Flagstaff lights, and the view is awesome.
Telescopes, heck, even binoculars are useless in a meteor shower, except for what they're good for every day. You want naked eye for meteor showers.
There are actually dozens of robotic telescopes that you can rent time on. Kitt Peak has had rental scopes accessible in various ways, including through Software Bisque's software for years. Amateurs have even built their own robotic telescopes and placed them in dark locations, then run them via the internet or dialup (actually just as good for single users)
Try again... 300mm (about 11inches). Goes for about $15000US.
= 15 51&m=35
http://www.buytelescopes.com/product.asp?t=&pid
No comment on braving the cold.
-Dubby
He should be right in the middle of this map:
map.
Check out the international dark-sky association if you're really interested in doing something about this.
Or possibly some lame excuse like the laws of physics. Look up Dawe's limit sometime. Oh heck, I'll do it for you...
The Dawes Limit gives the maximum amount of detail that can possibly be seen with a particular aperture (size) of telescope.
If you want to to calculate Dawes Limit for yourself you can use this simple formula: R' = 4.56/D. In this formula, D is the diameter of the main lens (aperture) measured in inches and R' is the Dawes limit given in arc-seconds.
Let's see... I'm guessing the lander is maybe 5m across. The moon is 384,400,000 meters away. That gives an angular size of 0.003 arc seconds. So in order to resolve it we need a diameter of 4.56/0.003=1520 inches = 126 feet. Currently our biggest telescope is 10 meters.
If you happen to find and get time on a 126 foot diameter scope, and your time is on a perfect night on the top of a mountain with no moisture and totally steady skies, you'll be able to resolve the lander as one single pixel. If you want to be able to image it as something recognizable you'd better look for a 500 foot diameter mirror.
And if we did manage to image it and convince the goofs that it wasn't a fake image, they'd say "OK, fine, you got a craft there but we don't believe it was really manned."
This is why people ignore the conspiracy theorists. It's like banging your head against the wall; unless you invent a time machine and put them on the rocket in 1969 they won't believe it.
If anyone does put them on the rocket, I suggest putting them on the outside.
Actually $50/hr. is a pretty good deal. The three scopes, their mounts, and the ccd camera systems are worth about $75,000 -$100,000 total. Combine that with his location which has excellent seeing in excess of 80% of the time and you have a prime system for some real serious deep sky work. Most people don't realize how difficult astrophotography is. During the exposure which can last anywhere bewteen seconds and hours depending on the magnitude (brightness) of the object being imaged, the scope must track the object without any vibration or error as the earth rotates (less than .000005in. at the mount). In addition to this, these scopes must have perfect goto systems, any error and the user will have a zero chance of being able find where the scope is pointing too. The ccd cameras on these scopes are top self stuff, depending on exactly which cameras he has, they cost anywhere between $5,000 and $25,000. The peltier cooling systems on the ccd cameras would make most over clockers droole. The ccd chip temperature must be maintained +- .5C or better and at 0C or below to maintain image and data accuraccy plus the temperature must be ramped down and back up at a rate which will not destroy the ccd chip. Also since these are robotic ccd camera scopes, they must be focused by software control. Put the whole system together and you have some very serious computer hardware and software. By the way, this guy has a roll off observatory building, that's why the scopes appear to be in the open. You still have plenty of time to enjoy Saturns rings for at least another year; meteor showers are viewed best with the naked eye, a scope has too narrow of a view to catch them; and no you can't or even Hubble see the flag on the moon. It would take something bigger than the Twin Kecks in orbit.m This stuff is actually computer geek heaven!