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Live Telescope Webcam Tonight
Daniel Bowen writes "Tonight's Willow Brook Elementary School star party will have decidedly more technology in use than previous years. In addition to a fleet of telescopes and astronomers for the children, this year there will be a live webcam connected to a telescope, operated by Roane State college astronomers, and hosted by the University of Tennessee Sunsite. The telescope image will also be projected onto the outside wall of the gymnasium in a 50 foot diagonal image alongside a Starry Night sky map. With cooperation from the City of Oak Ridge, TN, all streetlights in the neighborhood will be turned off, giving the giant projections clarity from the school yard, and night vision a chance. For one night out of the year, this suburban elementary school soccer field should have a beautiful nighttime sky, and a chance to inspire hundreds of children."
What about every night?
SLOOH has been running for, what, more than six months now.
Clear, Dark Skies
by which, I assume, you mean "day time" vibration shouldn't be a huge problem.
For stellar observations, where images might be built up over an hour or more, the mount usually costs more than the telescope - but for daytime use I'd suggest just using some masking tape to attach a webcam eyeball to your scope and see what happens.
For wireless - I'd look at the X-10 security cameras.
Clear, Dark Skies
The moon will be well up and very bright... they won't gain much from having the street lights off. They should have waited until a couple of day past the next new moon. Nonetheless, assuming it's clear, they'll see some craters on the Moon, Saturn and perhaps the Orion Nebula. I wish them all the luck in the world.
You *will* need a good mount to keep the instrument steady at high power. On the other hand, except for the smaller planets, you would be better off running the telescope at lower power if you can. Before you go to the trouble of constructing your own web-cam, though, you might want to research some of the on-line astronomy discussions. There are many options if you want to throw $$$ at the problem instead of time. Both Meade Instrument Co. and Celestron sell cameras similar to a web cam that have been packaged to replace the eyepiece of a telescope. These are usually packaged with telescope control and planetarium software. The cameras are USB-based, so your best bet is to have a computer on site and a wireless LAN, I guess. (Meade sells two -- the Lunar/Planetary Imager and the Deep Sky Imager; the LPI is designed for bright objects and the DSI is designed to be more sensitive, though there is a good deal of overlap in capability. The LPI would be better for terrestrial use in the daytime, for sure!)