Hi

I'm an IT Manager (hence the name) at a private school in the State of Victoria, Australia.

I discussed setting up an astronomy club at the school with the Head of the Science Faculty and she thought this an excellent idea.

What I'm looking to do is buy a decent telescope to do computer controlled astrophotography with. Something that I could set up at the school and control remotely (via the Internet) to take pictures of the night sky (being in the country here in Victoria means that there's very little light pollution to contend with). My department and the Science faculty would help meet the cost.

The downside of the rural location is that we can't have children around the school late at night because it would be v difficult to organize to get them home - hence remote control.

Budget A$2000-3000 is what I'm thinking.

I can certainly organize the necessary cabling to connect the telescope and CCD back inside the school and into the network.

I'd appreciate any and all reasonable suggestions.

John

I'm not trying to discourage you, but that seems a little short, unless A$ is 20US$ nowadays.

A middle school in Wyoming spent over $50K (Celestron 14" telescope, a Paramount GT-1100 computerized base, a SBIG ST-7 digital camera, a CyberMax computer, The Sky astronomy software, a permanent pier beneath a dome in an enclosed telescope room) in 1997. They've relied upon donations from corporations to maintain and improve it.

I too would be interested in lower budget solutions to this question. Welcome to BAUT!

The biggest problem is making it totally autonomous. Amateur equipment is designed with the intent that there will be a human there to take care of things that go awry or make connections or whatnot.

Even dedicated amateurs that have an observatory in their back yard and image from inside the house while wearing PJ's go outside to set things up or put things away or fix problems.

__________________
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Short answer: Skip to the last paragraph

You don't say where in Victoria you are located. You will need the help of an experienced imager to get you going. The learning curve for every aspect of what you are doing is very steep. You have a lot to learn in selecting equipment, taking an image, learning what it takes to process an image and a heck of a lot I'm leaving out. I see three astronomy clubs listed at http://www.astronomyclubs.com/ in Victoria. I'd get in contact with them for hands on help. You will need a lot of it.

Your budget, unfortunately, is woefully inadequate for a remote deep sky system. Even with donated equipment for deep sky imaging. But it is adequate for hands on planetary imaging. Also the learning curve for this is far easier.

Setting up for remote operation without anyone around can be done but unless you can get 90% of the budget donated I see no way to do it. Those at a local club may know of equipment that could be put to this use saving you many thousand of dollars however and give you the expertise you need -- which is extensive.

A local school here does SN hunting but the teacher is a very experienced amateur and uses his equipment, about $7.000 US. This though is done hands on with the kids in the field with him. Doing it remotely would be far more expensive.

While a very experienced amateur can set up a system to do what you want, I disagree with Aurora here as I do it, I know of no way to do it even at 10x your budget. There are things you aren't mentioning. A building to house the scope with a roof that can be automatically controlled, a way to detect clouds and rain and shut down mid exposure when necessary. A way to park the scope interlocked so the roof can't close and hit it unless it is parked. A way to be sure no one forgot to shut the roof when done. Cost of software needed to do this automatically isn't cheap. In fact it will eat much of your budget. You need to design cable run such that they can't possibly hang up. A way to focus remotely and to control dew when needed. Flats can be a problem when running remotely, especially if no one is around to do sky flats before it is dark. How do you cap the optics to keep them clean when done for the night? What happens if an approaching storm knocks out power so you can't shut down normally? These are just a few of the issues you face.

The problem of getting the kids to and from the school is small compared to those you face doing remote operation at your budget or even 10x your budget.

Maybe a daytime solar observatory? A Coronado PST and simple mount would be well within your budget. Add a web cam and you'd be in business without the headaches.

Rick

I think the solution there (and the OP seems to be already thinking of this) is to have the teacher operate the facility while the kids are at their homes. That removes 90% of the cost and problems with a remote facility--you wouldn't even have to have a roof much less a remotely removeable one.

Thanks for the replies.

The answer is that its clearly outside of my budget to have a fully automated system. I live 1 mile (or as the locals would say 1.6 km) away from the school. Its possible that I could take the telescope home, do some astrophotography there, and return the telescope. Teachers from the science dept could do something similar.

Its also possible to do photography outside of school hours while on campus, probably where teachers + parents and children would be able to be involved on particular events.

I was thinking of buying a Coronado as well. We have a big plasma screen in the Science Dept, so it would be cool to setup the Coronado on the nearby roof and pipe the image direct to the screen and see the photosphere roil in realtime.

I take the point about the Astronomy clubs as well. I have to take some advice and look at a few scopes from the grizzled veterans of astrophotography who have probably hand-grinded their own mirrors and know how it all works.

This little project won't get around to purchasing until March next year. Maybe the Sun will get out of its current funk and give decent sunspots by then, who knows?

The sort of telescope I was thinking of buying was something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=290363330736