Soliciting experience / opinions on sharing a remotely hosted telescope - Forums

Topic starter

7 hours ago

I’m giving some preliminary thought to placing a Sharpstar EDPHIII (360 mm focal length) scope out at a remote site such as Starfront, probably sitting on a yet-to-be-purchased ZWO AM3 or AM3N mount. Given the upfront costs of buying the mount and various nice-to-have-at-a-remote-site doodads such as a Deep Sky Dad flat panel and maybe a camera rotator, I was thinking of sharing access on a fee basis, perhaps on an even/odd day basis.

More specifically, I think this would probably have to be with a single partner who put up a few months fees in advance so that I am not endlessly subjected to people who just want to “try it out” for one month before deciding to get their own pier.

Since my wife doesn’t do astrophotography, I thought I’d post here and see if people have any experience or thoughts on the pitfalls of such an approach.

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Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

6 hours ago

At the end of the day you can’t control what others decide to do. If it were me, I’d would only want to do this with someone I know well. I’d also be sure that if the partner pulled out it wouldn’t be a problem going on my own. Lastly, I’d check and see if the remote host has any rules about subletting or group use,

Steven Lohr

New contributor

5 hours ago

I’m a Starfront customer. While the upfront cost of my system were fairly significant (approximately $5K), I have found that I am using the system almost every night, and every “no moon” night. I’m not sure I would want to or could share time. Given the number of targets that your system is capable of imaging and the time (15+ hours/target) necessary, you are not in danger of running out of targets for several years.

If money is an issue, it is also possible to set up a “bare bones” system at Starfront, and then add upgrades. For instance after initially purchasing and installing my system, I added a filter wheel and filters two months later, after the credit card had cooled down a bit. If you do need to share, then I would echo Tony’s comment, and do so only with someone you know and trust. Possibly a member of your local astronomy club?

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Scott Badger

3 hours ago

I’ve been thinking about a shared remote rig as well, but even though I live in NH, I’m not really looking for more data, at least not in the sense of more targets; I enjoy taking my time processing and what I get at home keeps me going. At a very (and very infrequent) best of 2.5+” seeing, though, better data would be nice…..

I also enjoy imaging, like actually being outside under the stars — even if it means getting out of bed at 3am and -5F out. So, if I were to do something remote, I think I would get a similar scope (FL at least) and use it to gather luminance (while still doing R,G, and B at home) for better resolution and a bit more integration time for all. Some new targets I’m too north for would be nice too.

My thoughts for a ‘contract’ are:
- shared ownership of gear and rent, whether splitting the cost of new gear/site, or one person buying into another’s. For me it would be important to have ownership, but given the fluky nature of astrogear, I definitely wouldn’t want to have sole responsibility for keeping it in perfect working order!….
- a specified depreciation of x% a year on the gear so that there’s always an agreed upon value.
- if one of the partners wants out, the other partner(s) have the option of buying the share of gear at the value above, or can choose to also sell and whatever it sells for is split equally.

Where I think it get’s a bit more difficult is how to resolve support issues (when to call in/pay for technical support) and gear replacements/upgrades.

Anyhow, never having done it before, I don’t know if that makes any sense, but would be great to hear from those with experience sharing.

Cheers,
Scott

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