I can also recommend starfront observatories (https://starfront.space) for folks looking to do remote hosting. It's in a remote location in Texas with solid skies and great staff, and has a pretty unique model of high density hosting to drive down cost, seeing a ton of deep sky astrophotographers come.
It's primarily for hobbyists. From the community discord, I know there are also serious rigs out there as well, on which some members are doing some astronomical science...
Obligatory comment that bray fals has been caught making up data ie, using Photoshop to paint detail in fals-1, the supposed new discovery that was actually already in some survey data.
Fun fact, Bray was the second jtw trident user in North America. I think I was the first.
Also, bit weird you can't come set up your own telescope.
I don't really know too much about this but apparently he calls himself an astrophotographer and not an astronomer, so maybe the use of photoshop isn't all that surprising.
his images on consumer hardware have smaller details than the hubble or meter wide telescopes on the ground. he says it's his processing skill, but it's probably really because he (at some stage of the process) puts his images through topaz denoise which invents detail.
In nova scotia there are grants to build “community solar gardens”. A 3-6MW solar farm is built somewhere cheap and convenient and then anybody in the community can pay for so many panels and then they get that amount knocked off the light bill as if they had rooftop solar. Idea is it lets people buy solar unrelated to if they rent/own or have a good roof pitch or whatever.
I've been looking to take my kids to an observatory, but the logistics makes it tricky (travel + night time), so I have been searching for online services where you can get a guided tour, with "hands-on" telescope control, but have so far come up short. It needs to be guided, since I know very little about astronomy and telescopes.
Try to see if there’s a local astronomy club. They tend to routinely have field nights where folks bring their equipment out, point it at something interesting and let the public engage in the activity.
I don't understand this service. I feel it takes away from the experience. One of the few hobbies that gets you outside and under the stars and learning to navigate the sky and its motions was already being reduced to pressing a few buttons on a laptop connected to the scope. Now, you don't even leave your house?
good for whomever that’s a cheap price lol, but I think if you’re a regular earning-ish person you would rather host the telescope in your own backyard
The backyard option is only feasible if you live somewhere without light pollution and clear skies, which is not most people.
$600/month is a reasonable deal if comparing it to driving couple of times a month to a dark sky location near you.
While it is fun and rewarding to be camping and hiking like that, the effort gets in the way of serious amateur astronomy.
Amateur astronomy is one of the few hobby science fields left where real contributions can be made and published without being a professional astronomer.
It really depends what your goals/targets are. You can still do a lot with narrowband filters that make light pollution a minimal concern.
One of my favorite images was taken from a resort balcony with my telescope directly under a fluorescent light (pretty bright, probably a 75W equivalent) with plenty of other lights along the building and sidewalk below. I used an Optolong L-eXtreme filter.
I always show people the picture of the telescope setup first (which includes a fully-lit cruise ship passing in the background), get the, “Why did you even bother bringing a telescope to Aruba if there wasn’t anywhere good to use it?” reaction, then show my final image of the Lagoon nebula.
At home it’s not as bad, but there’s still a streetlight about 50 meters away, plus the neighbors’ deck lights…yet I don’t need to care about that at all.
Bonus, not fumbling around in almost complete darkness makes things so much easier when setting up and breaking down the gear.
There's some wild stuff included though, roll-off roof enclosures over your telescope, gigabit symmetrical fiber on a mountain. Included a couple hours a month of specialized tech support.
Like it's definitely not for an occasional hobbyist but if it's your main hobby... it sounds kinda neat.
I could imagine $600/mo. being burned on more mundane hobbies like video games.
You can rent out viewing time on your remote telescope using services such as https://www.itelescope.net/ (you can search for telescopes hosted at SRO).
I wouldn’t expect it to be a massively profitable side hustle though.
Better skies, less light pollution, already built observatory houses to cover during the day, no space/not allowed to build in your own back yard, etc. loads of reasons to go with a hosted solution instead of building one in your own back yard.
If you've got some cheap dob with no tracking it makes sense to do it in your backyard (where the point is to look through eyepiece, not take photos), but $20 per night for everything but the actual scope at a high quality site is pretty good deal. I would expect given the other outlays to get a scope plus camera worth this site to be pretty large (e.g. at least 50k), so this is going to be a club or a school level thing, not an individual.
For comparison, pre-covid (so the cost has likely gone up quite a bit now) it was $200 a night for a 2m-class telescope and $1200 a night for a 4m-class telescope at a similar-ish site.
Since it's remote and networked to begin with, is there some way to get a time-share on one of these telescopes? I don't think I'm the target audience, but I imagine that one exists.
I can also recommend starfront observatories (https://starfront.space) for folks looking to do remote hosting. It's in a remote location in Texas with solid skies and great staff, and has a pretty unique model of high density hosting to drive down cost, seeing a ton of deep sky astrophotographers come.
From time to time there are fun collaborative projects too, like https://app.astrobin.com/u/bagman?i=ey9s59#gallery.
Telescope datacenter, what a cool concept.
Farm might be a better word. Like render farm.
Is this for hobbyists or industrial use?
It's primarily for hobbyists. From the community discord, I know there are also serious rigs out there as well, on which some members are doing some astronomical science...
Obligatory comment that bray fals has been caught making up data ie, using Photoshop to paint detail in fals-1, the supposed new discovery that was actually already in some survey data.
Fun fact, Bray was the second jtw trident user in North America. I think I was the first.
Also, bit weird you can't come set up your own telescope.
Evidence?
I don't really know too much about this but apparently he calls himself an astrophotographer and not an astronomer, so maybe the use of photoshop isn't all that surprising.
https://www.bbcearth.com/news/extreme-night-sky-with-bray-fa...
his images on consumer hardware have smaller details than the hubble or meter wide telescopes on the ground. he says it's his processing skill, but it's probably really because he (at some stage of the process) puts his images through topaz denoise which invents detail.
What are other examples of managed remote hosting of things that aren’t compute? I had considered this model for a 3D print farm years ago.
Telescopes are pretty common for this, but lab equipment is too. Universal particle accelerators and stuff
Factories & Food Delivery Kitchens
Medical device manufacturing, kind of.
amateur radio antenna farms also
Solar panel collectives.
Wait... Collective? Not a utility? Are we talking about a neighborhood chipping in on a few panels, or something more interesting?
In nova scotia there are grants to build “community solar gardens”. A 3-6MW solar farm is built somewhere cheap and convenient and then anybody in the community can pay for so many panels and then they get that amount knocked off the light bill as if they had rooftop solar. Idea is it lets people buy solar unrelated to if they rent/own or have a good roof pitch or whatever.
[dead]
This might be the smallest of marketing nitpickings, but the technical support is not free, it's complimentary for $600/month.
I've been looking to take my kids to an observatory, but the logistics makes it tricky (travel + night time), so I have been searching for online services where you can get a guided tour, with "hands-on" telescope control, but have so far come up short. It needs to be guided, since I know very little about astronomy and telescopes.
Try to see if there’s a local astronomy club. They tend to routinely have field nights where folks bring their equipment out, point it at something interesting and let the public engage in the activity.
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-clubs-organizations/
listing of clubs
[Edit: map locations are "aspirational". You will need additional research]
Thanks for the tip, but night + travel outside of the city, is why I'm looking for something online
I had no idea this whole world exists and it makes me happy.
I don't understand this service. I feel it takes away from the experience. One of the few hobbies that gets you outside and under the stars and learning to navigate the sky and its motions was already being reduced to pressing a few buttons on a laptop connected to the scope. Now, you don't even leave your house?
I think it's more for astrophotography enthusiasts where the hobby is more about getting good photography setups than looking at stars yourself
600/month
good for whomever that’s a cheap price lol, but I think if you’re a regular earning-ish person you would rather host the telescope in your own backyard
The backyard option is only feasible if you live somewhere without light pollution and clear skies, which is not most people.
$600/month is a reasonable deal if comparing it to driving couple of times a month to a dark sky location near you.
While it is fun and rewarding to be camping and hiking like that, the effort gets in the way of serious amateur astronomy.
Amateur astronomy is one of the few hobby science fields left where real contributions can be made and published without being a professional astronomer.
It really depends what your goals/targets are. You can still do a lot with narrowband filters that make light pollution a minimal concern.
One of my favorite images was taken from a resort balcony with my telescope directly under a fluorescent light (pretty bright, probably a 75W equivalent) with plenty of other lights along the building and sidewalk below. I used an Optolong L-eXtreme filter.
I always show people the picture of the telescope setup first (which includes a fully-lit cruise ship passing in the background), get the, “Why did you even bother bringing a telescope to Aruba if there wasn’t anywhere good to use it?” reaction, then show my final image of the Lagoon nebula.
At home it’s not as bad, but there’s still a streetlight about 50 meters away, plus the neighbors’ deck lights…yet I don’t need to care about that at all.
Bonus, not fumbling around in almost complete darkness makes things so much easier when setting up and breaking down the gear.
you can't not link to your photograph of the lagoon nebula after all that :)
There's some wild stuff included though, roll-off roof enclosures over your telescope, gigabit symmetrical fiber on a mountain. Included a couple hours a month of specialized tech support.
Like it's definitely not for an occasional hobbyist but if it's your main hobby... it sounds kinda neat.
I could imagine $600/mo. being burned on more mundane hobbies like video games.
Most backyards don't get
You can rent out viewing time on your remote telescope using services such as https://www.itelescope.net/ (you can search for telescopes hosted at SRO).
I wouldn’t expect it to be a massively profitable side hustle though.
Better skies, less light pollution, already built observatory houses to cover during the day, no space/not allowed to build in your own back yard, etc. loads of reasons to go with a hosted solution instead of building one in your own back yard.
If you've got some cheap dob with no tracking it makes sense to do it in your backyard (where the point is to look through eyepiece, not take photos), but $20 per night for everything but the actual scope at a high quality site is pretty good deal. I would expect given the other outlays to get a scope plus camera worth this site to be pretty large (e.g. at least 50k), so this is going to be a club or a school level thing, not an individual.
For comparison, pre-covid (so the cost has likely gone up quite a bit now) it was $200 a night for a 2m-class telescope and $1200 a night for a 4m-class telescope at a similar-ish site.
That's a pretty reasonable price. Most are around $800
How much remote hands time does that include per month?
I’m guessing these still need ‘manual’ tweaking at times.
Yeah looks very expensive unless I can pay say a day.
This service is for hosting your own remote controlled telescope, not short term rental of a shared telescope (think colo. vs cloud provider)
Since it's remote and networked to begin with, is there some way to get a time-share on one of these telescopes? I don't think I'm the target audience, but I imagine that one exists.
Yes, https://www.itelescope.net/
Looks like it. From the For Sale page: "Some clients are looking for telescope sharing arrangements."
Another telescope hosting service I heard about, based in Spain: https://www.pixelskiesastro.com/
There's some guy who built a ranch of remote operated telescopes for rent on YT pretty cool business