ivebeen using telescope.live for about 18 months. they recently changed their business model so i'm looking to compare altenatives. slooh ive ruled out. anyone have reviews of itelescope or any of the other one like utah desert remote observatories?
remote telescope reviews?
Dark matters astro has been churning a ton of data out over the last year. Worth taking a look to see what kind of services they offer.
I can’t tell exactly what you want. The title implies that you might be looking for a remote observatory but your post implies that you are looking for data. If you are looking for data, go talk to Bill Long at Dark Matters.
John
John
Yes, there are three remote possibilities. Hosting your own equipment, using someone else's equipment to gather data, and buying data acquired by others. Not sure which you mean but I am not a fan of the last one - you might as well download professional data in that case.
Bill McLaughlin:
Yes, there are three remote possibilities. Hosting your own equipment, using someone else's equipment to gather data, and buying data acquired by others. Not sure which you mean but I am not a fan of the last one - you might as well download professional data in that case.
While I don’t want to argue preference, professional data from Hubble or JWST requires a bit of a different overall workflow to process appropriately. The data from sites like ours, is identical in terms of its format to amateur data and does not require doing anything different — other than we handle all of the preprocessing tasks ahead of time and customers engage with master data only.
Bill
Helpful
i looked at your dark matters site and was a little confused. if someone subscribes to the site what exactly does that provide? all the data fom a aprticular scope for a year?
i looked at your dark matters site and was a little confused. if someone subscribes to the site what exactly does that provide? all the data fom a aprticular scope for a year?
Correct, you can reach out via email to us for a more in depth discussion. I don’t want to use Sal’s forums for means he doesn’t intend them to be used for.
The data from sites like ours, is identical in terms of its format to amateur data and does not require doing anything different — other than we handle all of the preprocessing tasks ahead of time and customers engage with master data only.
I recently started using Dark Matters - the data is high quality: long exposures (30+ hours in my datasets), nice targets, and excellent service.
TL was great, but they changed with the release of TL4. I'm using my remaining credits with them and likely won't continue (however, they are publishing nice solar images, so I might keep their most basic membership ($6/month) for occasional access to solar images).
Slooh and iTelescope.net each have their benefits and advantages.
Slooh.com is unique for its approach to capture, but it has a larger focus on education and community. You can get high-quality pics, patience is key, and working within their framework can provide excellent results.
iTelescope.net is great too. You have nearly complete control of the telescopes and access to amazing telescopes and sites. The only overall drawback is sometimes the telescopes are busy, but a little patience helps and you eventually end up with quality images. In cases where images don't turn out well, their support is always available to help make things right.
iTelescope.net also offers its Master Classes too, which is unique.
Helpful Engaging
We’ve just released new automation that should speed up the time to finish of a project on our scopes and when it ends up available for customers. Everything goes through our human centric QC process (which won’t change) but getting the intermediate toil automated will be huge for customers and for us. We have two scopes cutover to the new process now and are working on the rest, with our SVX180 system getting its backlog cleared and onto the new platform.
The two scopes on this new automation landed all of their June projects fully customer ready by July 1 which has been a long term goal for us. We also have very rich data about imaging quality that still give us tangible means to further tune our systems to perfection.
We’re also making this automation available to people to use themselves so there’s full transparency as well as helping out and giving back. While we are a business at the end of the day, we’re also caring members of the community that want to do what’s right to further enhance the field of Astrophotography.
The two scopes on this new automation landed all of their June projects fully customer ready by July 1 which has been a long term goal for us. We also have very rich data about imaging quality that still give us tangible means to further tune our systems to perfection.
We’re also making this automation available to people to use themselves so there’s full transparency as well as helping out and giving back. While we are a business at the end of the day, we’re also caring members of the community that want to do what’s right to further enhance the field of Astrophotography.
HI
I recommend 100% dark matters astrophotography.
The quality, regarding SNR, FOV, and calibrations, ensures easy, smooth, and enjoyable processing.
CS
Brian
I recommend 100% dark matters astrophotography.
The quality, regarding SNR, FOV, and calibrations, ensures easy, smooth, and enjoyable processing.
CS
Brian
I, too, will quit Telescope. Live after their format and policy changes.
One source of data that is not mentioned above is https://astrophotomarket.com/, which has a nice variety of data for sale at reasonable prices. I've processed several of their data sets, and all have been of good quality. It is an interesting business concept of marketing data from amateur imagers, which would otherwise just sit on someone's hard drive, benefiting no one.
George
One source of data that is not mentioned above is https://astrophotomarket.com/, which has a nice variety of data for sale at reasonable prices. I've processed several of their data sets, and all have been of good quality. It is an interesting business concept of marketing data from amateur imagers, which would otherwise just sit on someone's hard drive, benefiting no one.
George
Concise
A couple of great companies to work with that have data subscriptions, or you can even rent the remote gear. Roboscopes and Martin Pugh Astrophotography.
Ironically, IOTD today is with Dark Matters Data. (Fantastic Image by Scott BTW) https://app.astrobin.com/?i=lx4q9l
Can multiple people purchase the same dataset? If so, how does the IOTD process treat that?
Well Written Respectful
Arun H:
Can multiple people purchase the same dataset? If so, how does the IOTD process treat that?
Yes it is available for anyone to purchase and for subscribers. It’s treated the same way it is for TL data.