You don't need to write scripts or web pages! Everything works out of the box.
That's it! Assuming your observatory is already capable of taking reasonable quality images via MaxIm DL/CCD, the installation of ACP should take less than an hour. Figure another hour or so getting the web stuff going, and maybe 30 minutes for registering your chosen My-Sky.com observatory name.
| VIEW VIDEOS | LIVE ONLINE DEMO |
| SOME REMOTE OBSERVATORIES | DC-3 DREAMS COMMUNICATION CENTER |
Imagine... Your friend in a distant city using your scope to see the wonders of space... or seeing your scope move and hearing your camera click when a child somewhere far away hunts for a new asteroid... It's easy! Any residential internet connection will do, and setup time is less than two hours.
When people first start thinking about an internet based observatory, they typically envision a web page where they can see some sort of star map, click to move the scope and click to operate the camera and focuser, and maybe some switchable lights and a TV camera that lets them see the scope move.
While this may be thrilling at first, it's not the best way to control a remote observatory. Besides being wasteful of telescope time, it requires a constant internet connection and login to assure that images are acquired. And more importantly, it exposes your instruments to abuse or mistakes, and requires training and trust.
A safe and easy way to offer use of your observatory to others is to provide fill-out forms that let your users specify what they want and when, not how. The robotic observatory needs to be hands-off. This protects your instruments and computer, eliminates interruptions due to connection lossage, and eliminates the need to train users on how to aim, focus, and expose.
If you'd like to get the feel of using a Share Your Sky! observatory right now, you can either view the videos we've produced, or create an account for yourself on the Red Mountain Simulated Observatory and try it! Once you are logged in to the observatory, be sure to go to the New Users Read This page in the Online Help section of the observatory home page!
This is a complete observatory with simulated instruments. It has a robotic telescope, imager, focuser, autoguider, and filter wheel with astro-imaging and photometry (UBVRI) filters. The software, ACP Observatory Control Software, is unaware that these instruments are simulators, though, so you get the full experience of using a real observatory.
ACP Observatory Control Software provides the automation hub for the observatory, and works as the web and FTP server for your observatory (see the next section). It has been designed to operate completely hands-off.
With this combination, you get automatic image calibration, pointing corrections (no TPOINT needed, but you can use it with the Paramount), and auto-guiding without any intervention on your part. A detailed log is produced, allowing you to diagnose problems and tune your system for best operation. Images are automatically flat and dark corrected, plus astrometric info in the form of WCS coordinates are automatically added to the FITS headers. In short, this is a professional-class automation facility!
For advanced users, nothing else has the flexibility and power of this system. The huge advantage is that you can fully customize the entire system. You can edit the web pages. You can edit the control scripts. You can add image processing features, integrate in other hardware (e.g. dome, weather station), or whatever else you can think of.
It is possible to acquire single images using Share Your Sky! by filling out a form and submitting it. Online deep-sky catalog lookup is provided. However, for multiple images Share Your Sky! uses a more efficient and robust architecture:
The observer may watch the progress of the plan via a web page that displays a detailed observing log produced by the automation at the observatory. No further interaction with the observer is needed, though, and the observer can simply log off and return at any time later to check up on the progress of the run or retrieve images and the observing log when the run has been completed.
Interested? View the videos now! Or take a live tour on the Red Mountain Simulated Observatory. Or take the plunge with the 60 day demo. Check out the How to Do It info to the left. You can start with a low cost version of ACP Observatory Control Software that supplots only local web and FTP support, get familiar with the automation, then move up to internet web and FTP services later.
If this web page looks very old fashioned and plain, you are using a very old browser. The 3-column layout is visible only in browsers which support the web standards that were put into place in 1998, six years ago! In all good conscience we are sorry but we can no longer support older types of browsers or applications that are not consistent with current standards. You really should look into FireFox 1.5 or Internet Explorer 6.
Please see the old Web Standards Project home page, where Glish says it all eloquently. Then see their page on upgrading your browser to one that supports W3C standards. Finally, if you want a real hoot, check out Zeldman's To Hell With Bad Browsers. If you read these articles, you'll hopefully be convinced.
DC-3 Dreams, SP - ACP Observatory Control Software, the automation hub, scriptable telescope controller, utility object server, and web/FTP server engine. Includes PinPoint Astrometric Engine, the scriptable astrometric engine used for telescope pointing enhancement and data reduction.
Diffraction Limited - MaxIm DL/CCD 4, the scriptable camera, guider, filter, and focuser controller, and scriptable image processing and data reduction engine.
FocusMax - a scriptable autofocus application that works together with MaxIm and ACP to provide rapid and very accurate automatic focusing.
The ASCOM Initiative, a group of astronomy hardware and software providers that have banded together to provide you with standards-based integration between their products.
Deerfield.com - DNS2Go, the system that gives your observatory a My-Sky.com name on the internet even if you have a changing internet address (typical of residential connections). Share Your Sky! supplies a special version of DNS2Go for My-Sky.com.
