I am curious about the sort of performance figures that people get from having their gear in remote observatories. Any sort of metrics would be good, but I mentioned finished integration time as I feel it is the most relevant. Any input is much appreciated.
How many finished (integrated) Hrs per year do people get with remote observatory setups?
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In Chile I get around 1000 observable hours per year, moon or not.
Well Written
With my remote setup in Spain I observed around 500 finished hours for 26 objects in 2023.
of course more hours have been done for objects not finished yet.
CS Davy
of course more hours have been done for objects not finished yet.
CS Davy
So my reason for asking was to basically try and work out where my location in Zambia stands in comparison. We have a raining season from late October until end of March. While that time does see a fair bit of rain and cloud, it also sees better skies when they are clear (not full of dust and smoke). April through to October is generally very good, with the best times being the early dry season of April, May and June before the dust and smoke gets bad. But even then, so long as targets are fairly high imaging is still really good. The tail end and beginning of the rains is too risky to image overnight unattended so imaging time then does reduce a lot. We are not in the country from early December until mid March, so there is that. B1 skies, seeing is according to my reckoning pretty decent. So far, completed deep sky projects (discounting any super wide stuff with cameras and lenses shot while imaging deep, and only counting finished projects) is 363 Hrs between 27th of March and 27th July.
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This is quite interesting. I am really surprised to see these numbers. Especially 1000 hours in chile is really amazing. My list of observations counts 1500 hours in total. It took me 4 years to get this amount of subs and for more than 2 years now, I use 3 setups per night. Sometimes it happens, that I am not able to image even if the sky is clear, but I try to do astro photography as much as I can.
Christian Großmann:
This is quite interesting. I am really surprised to see these numbers. Especially 1000 hours in chile is really amazing. My list of observations counts 1500 hours in total. It took me 4 years to get this amount of subs and for more than 2 years now, I use 3 setups per night. Sometimes it happens, that I am not able to image even if the sky is clear, but I try to do astro photography as much as I can.
Take into account that "observable hour" stands for my fairly widefield setup at 1.4"/px sampling. Bigger telescopes might not find these 1000h acceptable, seeing-wise.
I only do astrophotography. At home (Switzerland), I can count something like 60 hours a year, mostly because of the weather, and because I cannot stay awake all night, and my dome must be moved by hand!
Quite different situation with my rig at Astrocamp (Spain), where I can let the exposures run all night.
There, I count between 500 and 800 hours per year.
Philippe
Quite different situation with my rig at Astrocamp (Spain), where I can let the exposures run all night.
There, I count between 500 and 800 hours per year.
Philippe
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I have been at the SRO for ten years. The imaging hours you get varies by season both because of length of night and or course, weather. I estimate in the last year I got about 1,600 hours of subs, almost all of which are usable, although not all of the finished images from those data are posted on Astrobin. During that same period I did post 72 DSO images.
Hope this helps.
Eric
Hope this helps.
Eric
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I can understand why the OP wants "finished" hours but that couples into how much time I feel like devoting to processing and I'm generally so busy and obsessive about my process when I do get to it that my "finished" output is not reflective of how many good subs I gather.
I image at Obstech in Chile where there are roughly 300 clear nights per year. I image every single clear night. Nights are short during the summer and long during the winter but it's a fair (and very conservative) estimate that I might gather at least 6 hours every night for a total of about 1800 hours/year. Seeing is generally spectacular during the Spring and Fall and even when it's spectacular, I might only get a usable yield of around 50% with the 24" scope. My refractor produces 80% - 90% yield. So assuming a total of 4 months of really good seeing that's a total of about 600 hrs, which translates into maybe 300 hrs/yr of "good data" from the 24" and ~500 hr/yr with the refractor. At an average of say 25 hrs/image that's about 12 "finished" images/yr from the 24" and 20 from the refractor. That's a very conservative estimate and since I don't process that many images each year, I'm building up a solid backlog of good data!
John
I image at Obstech in Chile where there are roughly 300 clear nights per year. I image every single clear night. Nights are short during the summer and long during the winter but it's a fair (and very conservative) estimate that I might gather at least 6 hours every night for a total of about 1800 hours/year. Seeing is generally spectacular during the Spring and Fall and even when it's spectacular, I might only get a usable yield of around 50% with the 24" scope. My refractor produces 80% - 90% yield. So assuming a total of 4 months of really good seeing that's a total of about 600 hrs, which translates into maybe 300 hrs/yr of "good data" from the 24" and ~500 hr/yr with the refractor. At an average of say 25 hrs/image that's about 12 "finished" images/yr from the 24" and 20 from the refractor. That's a very conservative estimate and since I don't process that many images each year, I'm building up a solid backlog of good data!
John
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John and Eric's estimates are way more in line with what I've experienced. 1000 hours at Chile in a year is too little. Our automation runs and ensures we have a target running at all times when the roof is open in both New Mexico and Chile.
I only shoot when the moon is below the horizon and track each of, now, 3 instruments. I have been operational since 2013. I get an average of 640 moonless hours per year per instrument. The observatory is at 6350' on the eastern side of the southern most Sierra Nevada mountains, a high desert chaparral environment with less than 6" average rain per year. And yes there is a fire season in full swing during summer months.
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