I actually have 4 different setups I use,
East Walpole MA, Skywatcher EQ6R, Celestron HD 8", Lunt ED102, Skywatcher 120mm ZWO cameras skies Bortle 7.5-8
N. Scituate RI Seagrave Observatory, the Skyscrapers club, 16" Meade 12" Meade, my ZWO cameras Skies Bortle 6.5
SLOOH remote membership observatory, Canary Islands 20" Planewave 17" Planewave 14" Celestron SCT Skies Bortle 2.0
Chile 17" Planewave 14" Celestron SCT
I do mostly solar from my home in East Walpole due to the crappy skies and the fact that since my stroke I find I need 9 hours sleep a night 9pm-6am
When I can I use the club scopes at Seagrave Observatory in N. Scituate RI, it is about an hour drive south of me.
Most of my deep sky images are taken using the SLOOH observatories, they are a subscription observatory where you actually control the scope in near real time, you must set up your imaging run leaving at least 20 minutes before the start of it, it the time is available. They are opening another site in Australia soon.
In talking to people at my astronomy club and also at that other forum, I see a real distaste towards rental scopes and club scopes, towards people using scopes and equipment they don't own for photography and observing. It is funny because professional astronomers rarely own the equipment they are using.
Many people have to set up in their backyard or on their rooftop in the middle of the city, even myself who has real problem with walking using a cane and bone on bone in my knees so I can't carry anything I have a real problem setting up a scope in the backyard unless they have help and I don't have a permanent observatory and my skies are approaching Bortle 8 being 300 feet from a large mall, on a good dark night I can just make out Polaris with averted vision if I am lucky. I have done mostly solar due to my skies in a pure white zone, it is not nice being able to read sky charts by the light pollution. More than that for me and several members of my club are the physical limitations. I used to gold prospect but can no longer drive long distances or even do a simple thing like walk down an embankment without help and pain.
I have started using SLOOH a rental scope with a couple observatories, as well as I have been using the club scopes at the Seagrave Observatory where the skies are a really dark Bortle 6.5, at least they seem dark compared to my skies. The downside it is an hour away and I have trouble driving at night (boy it sucks getting old).
I have always felt that AP is 90% processing after the fact. Yes there is a thrill to getting your own image from your own scope (ignore the oval stars) but so many people in our club have their own remote observatory, with goto and auto guiders, they just roll off the roof and go back inside and image on their PC, not much different that what I have been doing except I don't roll off the roof.
In land or aerial photography I don't see any reaction to people renting lenses or cameras, but I do in astronomy.
I am trying to get people in our club, whether they own scopes or not, to get into remote observing, especially if they are interested in Halpha (Slooh has a LS60) or coming this fall an observatory in the Middle East so this winter you can do DSO stuff in the late morning, 20 hours a day.
I am mainly a solar astronomer but am interested in DSO AP. I have done some around here but it is a challenge. Why? Well my skies are Bortle 8.0 I went out the other night on a really clear dark night (could still read my star chart by the sky glow and looked up and could SEE 5 STARS, that was across the whole sky, could make out Arcturus but no other stars anywhere around it. Polaris? Forget it tough even with averted vision, it is over the large mall that is literally 300 feet away. To the south 600 feet away is a new factory brightly lit all night and to the SW is a 24 hour Walmart and shopping and restaurant center 1/4 mile away. Along the Auto-Mile in Norwood are 15 car dealerships from 1/4 mile away to 4 miles away in both directions (E-W) along Rt 1. The dark sky maps show us as white zone. Sometimes I can travel to the Seagrave Observatory where on a good dark night we have Bortle 6.0-6.5 skies (you can sometimes get a hint of the Milky Way at 2 am) and that is about 1 hour away but with health/heart issues and having had a stroke, it is not always an option plus a good part of the year it is snowed in.
I am also severely tree challenged - to the south I can get about 60 degrees of sky from about SSW to SE from about 20 degrees to 50 degrees then overhead I drop to only 25 degrees of sky, stars move across in about 30 minutes overhead. To the North and E to SE is the large mall and a blown out sky, to the W-NW is some open sky that is slightly better than my southern view.
So I checked out SLOOH and am still checking it out.
First from the Solar standpoint, the Lunt LS60 they have is good for visual - interesting to watch the sun at any time and check out features, especially when my sky is clouded out or my observing pad is snowed in. For imaging you can get snapshots of the sun but don't expect great results as they are just snapshots, to stack 400 shots well you could do it but I don't know if it worth the effort with the current solar minimum.
Now on to my experiences with SLOOH. I had looked around to see what is out there that is reasonably priced and will give ok results. I decided on SLOOH due to the scopes, the ease of use, and the cost. I have friends who have automated their observatories and we are going to do that at the Seagrave Observatory and that basically is SLOOH, you get to use 9 different polar aligned scopes on EQ mounts with decent cameras. Focus is already done (my friends don't change theirs unless they change gear).
There are two levels of membership, the first is the Apprentice this lets you book one of the scopes for an imaging run (what they call missions), 1 at a time, but unlimited times a month and do a "piggyback" mission (they call their imaging/viewing runs missions) 5 at a time but unlimited times during the month and take snapshots of missions currently running. You get PNG files from you missions/snapshots. Piggyback Missions are where you request the data from someone else’s mission. Not only do you get to down a PNG from you “mission” but you also get the raw data in fits images (L,R,G,B 4 files)
The cost is $200 a year - not bad to try it out or sit there and watch the sun and DSO's from the scopes live.
I started with that for about 24 hours and then upgraded to
The Astronomer Level, was $300 now $600 a year, this gives unlimited missions. You can schedule 5 missions and 5 piggyback missions at a time. As soon as a mission finishes you can schedule another one. You can get 15 or 20 missions in an evening easily, more data than you could possibly work. A difference between Apprentice and Astronomer is not just the number of missions but that at the Astronomer level you are given the RAW FITS files from the imaging runs. They have one OSC camera and the rest are mono and you can schedule either LRGB runs or Luminescence (B&W) runs.
It is really no different from you using your own GOTO scope, you decide on the scope you want to use and the time you are reserving the scope for and then you either plug in an object from 1 of 10 or 12 catalogs, Messier, Caldwell, Herschel, Bennet etc OR you can plug in RA and DEC and then determine the exposure you want. At the appointed time (and you can schedule up to a week in advance) the scope slews (that is how they pronounce SLOOH) to that object or location and starts imaging. You can watch the scopes at any time they are operating, it is EAA at its best and take a snapshot at any time to get a PNG. One limitation on imaging is that the missions are either 5 minutes or 10 minutes depending on the scope used. But since you can schedule unlimited missions you can stack all the files you get. for LRGB you get either 1L 1R1G1B or 3L 1R1G1B or 20 second Lums or 60 second Lums. For the PNG's there are processing recipes to affect the resulting image, for FITS you get the raw files. It seems as if each file is a 60 second capture, which with their dark skies does well.
They currently have observatories in the Canary Islands (5 scopes) and Chile (3 scopes) and are adding one in the United Arab Emirates (will be a 20" Planewave and 17" Planewave).
They have a 20" Planewave, two - 17" Planewaves, 11" Celestron Astrograph, two 14" Celestron C14's and a 90mm Takahashi.
Downsides? They bin their images so that they are not as good as they could be but with multiple missions you make up the quality. You still have to worry about satellites, planes, wind, humidity and clouds.
Conclusion: For someone in the situation I am, lousy skies, snow, cold, wind, clouds, lots of trees, difficulty traveling, I think SLOOH is a great site. Some people look down on it, saying you don't own the equipment (I forgot to check my Powerball number if I win I will buy SLOOH and it will be my equipment ROFL) and you schedule your time. But how is that different than saying I am going to fire up my remote observatory in the backyard at 9 pm and go to M42 and take an image? Yes there is joy in finding something yourself but how often do you do that? I know I use GOTO all the time.
I have been doing SLOOH for a couple years now, what can you get? well here are three of my shots (more at
www.wx1usn.com ) I am happy with them.
Oh BTW you are required as part of your membership to keep the SLOOH copyright on each image, you can also add your own since the finished image is your image and interpretation. They cannot be used for awards in AF but they can certainly make you feel good about getting good shots and refining your skills. It got me to learn how to do FITS, I had never done them before
