I would like to share with you my personal experiences with the i-telescope.net operation. Just to clarify - it is my personal experience and I would like to ask you for your comments on this post if you have used or are still using the same telescope network.
Just to begin - it is not bad but it is not really my recommendation.
Let me explain - as a provider for remote imaging for people who have to pay quite some money, I find it not appropriate that their telescopes are still operating with CDD cameras - not that they are bad, but totally outdated. The modern CMOS cameras require less exposure time and deliver much better quality of images. Yes, some 10 or 15 years ago, the FLI-PL and similar cameras were state-of-the-art cameras and very expensive, but the actual CMOS cameras from ZWO or (my preference) QHY are by far better and do not have column defects and other problems.
That leads me to another question or statement - if one uses CCD cameras, to obtain signal quality compared to e.g.a QHY600, one needs more exposure time - that means, a customer needs to pay more for an image - 600 seconds is quite normal for CCD imaging and 300 at max for CMOS imaging for most targets. Maybe I am wrong, but that is also my impression.
Weather - well, that is always and almost everywhere a problem - the refund option for unusable subs works perfect. You count the usable subs and deduct the number of those which cannot be used due to clouds etc and then request the percentage refund and within seconds it is on your account balance - perfect.
What is a bit of a problem with probably all remote imaging operations - reliability of the systems or better down time. I can see that quite a lot of the telescopes of their system are often down -due to maintenance, repair or whatever. Not pleasant, well, but something which one has to accept. Remote operation of a complex imaging system is not an easy task and there are many, very many parts which can fail or sometimes give up.
If a scheduled imaging system cannot take place, that session is automatically rescheduled - well, that is fine, but it can take up to several weeks until your session goes through… bad luck, I guess.
Now to the pricing - in my opinion, the operation is quite expensive as soon as you aim for deep sky imaging with really good telescopes. Some others are reasonable, but very often booked solid or out of operation. But the price for one hour at a CDK17 is - one example - quite steep imo. And one hour is not much in imaging time for CCD cameras - I just tried it out. NGC3521 on a CDK17 with their camera FLI-PL6303 - 1h 17min with 25% moon discount 53 Dollars. That resulted in 28x120 seconds images. Just enough to get an idea of what that galaxy would look like if enough subs were taken…I guess with that equipment, I would have needed about 4-5 hours to get enough subs for a very good quality image after all processing. But that would have resulted in a bill of about 200-250 Dollar!? No way, that is far too much for me and my financial possibilities. And it would have been only one (!) target.
Here comes Telescope.live - no, that is not a paid advertising for that operation, but for that amount of money, I get personalized target execution with priority etc. And for already 20 Dollars per month (only), I can download from a list of hundreds of targets. I like that operation very much and have excellent and very satisfying experiences.
One more good remark about i-telescope - the support is excellent and fast in replying and competent. Question posted - answer, and yes, a competent one, received within very short time. Thanks for this. Problem solving as well - very good support.
But overall, I cannot use that system anymore, to get really good results of targets, which are out of my reach at the Northern Hemisphere, I would have to spend far too much money, far too much for pleasure.
I would be interested in your experiences and comments - thanks!
Just to begin - it is not bad but it is not really my recommendation.
Let me explain - as a provider for remote imaging for people who have to pay quite some money, I find it not appropriate that their telescopes are still operating with CDD cameras - not that they are bad, but totally outdated. The modern CMOS cameras require less exposure time and deliver much better quality of images. Yes, some 10 or 15 years ago, the FLI-PL and similar cameras were state-of-the-art cameras and very expensive, but the actual CMOS cameras from ZWO or (my preference) QHY are by far better and do not have column defects and other problems.
That leads me to another question or statement - if one uses CCD cameras, to obtain signal quality compared to e.g.a QHY600, one needs more exposure time - that means, a customer needs to pay more for an image - 600 seconds is quite normal for CCD imaging and 300 at max for CMOS imaging for most targets. Maybe I am wrong, but that is also my impression.
Weather - well, that is always and almost everywhere a problem - the refund option for unusable subs works perfect. You count the usable subs and deduct the number of those which cannot be used due to clouds etc and then request the percentage refund and within seconds it is on your account balance - perfect.
What is a bit of a problem with probably all remote imaging operations - reliability of the systems or better down time. I can see that quite a lot of the telescopes of their system are often down -due to maintenance, repair or whatever. Not pleasant, well, but something which one has to accept. Remote operation of a complex imaging system is not an easy task and there are many, very many parts which can fail or sometimes give up.
If a scheduled imaging system cannot take place, that session is automatically rescheduled - well, that is fine, but it can take up to several weeks until your session goes through… bad luck, I guess.
Now to the pricing - in my opinion, the operation is quite expensive as soon as you aim for deep sky imaging with really good telescopes. Some others are reasonable, but very often booked solid or out of operation. But the price for one hour at a CDK17 is - one example - quite steep imo. And one hour is not much in imaging time for CCD cameras - I just tried it out. NGC3521 on a CDK17 with their camera FLI-PL6303 - 1h 17min with 25% moon discount 53 Dollars. That resulted in 28x120 seconds images. Just enough to get an idea of what that galaxy would look like if enough subs were taken…I guess with that equipment, I would have needed about 4-5 hours to get enough subs for a very good quality image after all processing. But that would have resulted in a bill of about 200-250 Dollar!? No way, that is far too much for me and my financial possibilities. And it would have been only one (!) target.
Here comes Telescope.live - no, that is not a paid advertising for that operation, but for that amount of money, I get personalized target execution with priority etc. And for already 20 Dollars per month (only), I can download from a list of hundreds of targets. I like that operation very much and have excellent and very satisfying experiences.
One more good remark about i-telescope - the support is excellent and fast in replying and competent. Question posted - answer, and yes, a competent one, received within very short time. Thanks for this. Problem solving as well - very good support.
But overall, I cannot use that system anymore, to get really good results of targets, which are out of my reach at the Northern Hemisphere, I would have to spend far too much money, far too much for pleasure.
I would be interested in your experiences and comments - thanks!
