Note to a dark sky site about renting cameras with telescopes and all sky needs of the world

Richard K Collins All Sky Cameras, Collaborative Global Model of the Sun, Internet Best Practices, Schools, Universities, Learning and Working July 4, 2021

I picked this because your example was “start at $600 per year”. But I have no idea what this does. Throwing a bunch of jargon at me means nothing. That picture of the equipment looks like a jumble of wires and objects. Can you see all parts of the sky? Does it run continuously? How many images does $600 pay for?

How many images, of what size, covering what part of the sky how often?

I am not criticizing you, I just don’t understand from what you have posted what the results would be. I don’t have a telescope, never used one. But I know a lot about data and images.

The simplest thing I would like to do, if I had my own telescope – would be to point it to the zenith or an observable direction, lock it and leave it running 24/7 on the Internet. As one frame per second 4k on YouTube, and also at 1 frame per second lossless somewhere online. And, if I had control over the camera image taking and processing – I would gather pixels statistics and share them in a separate stream.

I am probably wasting your and my time. But I have a dream about something. I just don’t know where to find it.

If I was going to host something, I would have a decent all sky camera (full 180 degree view of the whole sky) also 24/7 – 4k 1 fps, raw stacked 1 fps, pixels statistics and analyses — all live. Personally, I think every dark sky site in the world ought to have a public sharing of their sky for all people. It is easy to get donors for something like that. Selling images to individuals or groups for them to “own” is understandable, but I think everyone (7.8 Billion) out to be able to see the full sky, be able to look at its history, process the data to learn new things, and combine with all other groups looking at the sky. Clouds? Wonderful. There are groups who want to know what they are seeing, to measure those kinds of things, to look at histories and changes, categories and processes.

Richard Collins, Houston Texas

Those are the questions that come to mind. And the sample image folder is empty.

Lloyd,

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, even though you didn’t really answer any of my questions.

I went back and looked. Your text is hard to read. It says:

“You can expect 30-50 complete data sets per year averaging ~ 16 hours. The typical integrations are 16 frames x 300, 600, 900 or 1800s seconds. For example, standard wideband integrations are 16 x 900 on f/5+ systems, and 16 x 1800 for narrowband.”

It is not clear, but “data set” and “integration” sound like they are the same thing. And they are all 16 frames with different exposures.

Not clear either, if those 16 hours are for me as there are opportunities, or someone else always directing.

At best there are 16*(16*3600)/300 = 3072 frames per year, or about 20 cents per frame. At worst, 16*(16*3600)/1800 = 512 frames.

You did not really read and try to understand what I was suggesting about all sky cameras and their potential market. A thousand subscribers at $120 per year for one low cost, low maintenance all sky camera is equivalent to 200 subscribers for more expansive equipment. If you get thousands of people watching your skies, there will be, among them, those who will want to see more. Grade schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities, clubs, government agencies for the elderly. Even kindergartens and community centers, libraries. Many people who could use a well thought out and accessible live image of their sky. And international uses will be looking to integrate data from wider areas.

Then there are the same places – but for meteorological data, and then you get all the career people and busy people who need to see the sky and its weather.

Just some ideas. Thanks for getting back to me.

Richard Collins Director, The Internet Foundation

Note to a dark sky site about renting cameras with telescopes and all sky needs of the world

About: Richard K Collins

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