Stefan Kürti´s Astro Web

Online robotic telescopes

Remote observation of asteroids

Internet and new ways in observations

A new era has started in astronomy when Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the sky four centuries ago. As time goes by astronomers used more and more sophisticated instruments for observations - bigger and better telescopes, later they began to use advatnages of photography. Then first spacecrafts offered us images of the Moon and nearby planets 50 years ago. Finally came the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer and WISE observatories provided us deeper insight to the heavenly bodies.

But the real revolution in astronomy imaginery came along with CCD cameras and broad usage of internet. The high power of this two instruments enabled amateurs with medium setup to observe objects, which were few years ago privilige for only the biggest observatories and space telesccopes.

Remote observations

CCD camera allowed to amaterur astronomers to do real science. By this modern technology you can observe without beeing near the telescope, you could be even a thousands miles away. You do not need to set up your telscope, make a polar alignment. Only one thing you have to do - sit behind your computer and connect to internet. After preparing your observation plan in a simple text file, you send it to telescope memory on the other side of Earth. And then you can do anything else or just nothing. The new era has just started - the dreamworld for astronomers - observation round the clock - 24 hours in a row. When the Sun went down and the night started in Australia, you observe from there, later you can "move" to New Mexico in USA and continue to observe your object on the sky.

The control of telescope turns on the system at the time you selected, opens the roof of observatory, slews telescope to the star field you selected, takes images for a desired time and the shuts down the observatory. When you return home from work, you need only download new images via internet and then you are ready for processing images and measuring them.

The quality of seeing in Slovakia is far far from the best places around the world, e.g. in Chile, South America. If you would posses a small acre in California, Chile or Australia, you can dream of building a small obervatory there. To fulfill such a dream you need a quite big amount of money. But apparently you cannot allowed this. But there is a solution how to observe from much better places than is in your backyard and even without moving behind your PC. And you will need just a fraction of money you would needed for observatory construction.

On-line observations is possible from these observatories:

• iTelescope Observatory
• Sierra Stars Observatory (SSO)
• The LightBucket Network

iTelescope Observatory

One of these remote observatories is Global Rent a Scope (GRAS) in Mayhill, New Mexico. I learned about GRAS from Andrew Lowe on my early NEAT hunting days. We changed few e-mails then regarding asteroid search. Later I followed his asteroid work with remote telescopes. Andrew is a long time user of GRAS facilities and he discovered this way over 450 asteroids up to date using Takahashi Epsilon 250 mm hyperbolic flat field astrograph fitted with a SBIG ST10XME camera.

When you decide to do remote observations, GLOBAL RENT A SCOPE (GRAS) has the best choice of telescopes. Another advantage is that you can observe from both North and South hemisphere - in New Mexico, USA and in Moorook, Australia. They offer altogether 11 telescopes at different diameters added with CCD cameras. 5 telescopes are in New Mexico and the rest are in Australia. You can search variable stars, hunt for asteroids, follow up new comets, or just take deep sky objects from Down Under. You can make a reservation of observing time in 120 days ahead, but you can also observe in real time when selected telescope is free at that moment. Very convenient. You just sit behind your computer and telescope thousand miles away from you is taking images of your target under the Southern Cross, which you could not observe from your backyard at all.

Sierra Stars Observatory Network

Sierra Stars Observatory (SSO) offers two telescopes: 61 cm Ritchey-Crétien in Markeeville, California and 37 cm telescope Rigel in Sonoite, Arizona. When you need to observe something urgently, but there is a bad wheather in Arizona, usualy in California is clear sky.

The LightBucket Network

There is offer of three telesopes. The biggest is 61 cm Ritchey-Cretién, other telescope of same type is smaller - 32 cm, and third is 20 cm Newton.

Comparison of observatories

Each remote observatory has its own method to schedule your imaging sessions. It will take you some time to learn them properly. The most sophisticated seems The LigthBucket Telescope Network, but work is easiest with Sierra Stars Observatory. At GRAS you need to bear in mind calibration images too, at least to that level, that you have to download them from GRAS ftp. Other two obseratories do calibrations instead of you and you receive already processed images, which means time savings.

From asteroid hunter point of view, usage of GRAS is advantage for its bigger field of view 60 X 40 arc minutes. But there is also disadvantage of smaller telescope compared to other two. To catch stars about brightness of 19-19,5 magnitude your exposure should be about 8 minutes. On the other side with 16" telescope of SSO or LBTN is enough imaging for 2 minutes and you catch stars up to 20 magnitude. Field of view at those telesopes are smaller: 20 x 20 arc minutes.

My first observations with iTelescope (GRAS)

I could not resist my temptation of hunt with much more better set up than is my own and from a location with very good seeing conditions. And that is offerd on Mayhill, New Mexico, USA. For my first target I choosed minor planet 2002 QB130 which I discovered on NEAT images. It was heading to its opposition in October 2009 and with brightess about 19. visual magnitude it should be easily reachable. Although its orbital solutions was based on 2 years positions - except from time of discovery in 2002 there were few other observations from year 2004. Since then it was not observed.

And I cahtched it, it has 19,2 mag. I shooted for 8 minutes and dimmest objects on image were about 19,5 mag. Thanks to my new positions its orbit was improved so hten MPC could linked to it also several other observations.

List of my asteroids discovered via remote observatories