A micro-observatory remote controlled (for transient events)

[jimao22]

Hi,

I'm back after a while and I want to show you my latest work in the field of DIY astronomy, more precise - observatories.

Me and my friend Tavi started to work to a project - a remote controlled micro observatory, for searching transient events on the night sky - novae, super-novae, new weak meteor showers. 

We started the work from the scratch and I am very delighted by the result so far. We still have to work a lot till the end, but I hope the project will be a success and will open new perspectives for us.

The 5 minutes film will show you on FF what we did till now.

 

 

[wimvb]

That looks very promising. What focal length do you plan to use?

[jimao22]

Not sure for the moment. Should be a very wide field objective - something like 70...90 degree, to oversees a good part of the sky.

This will help also to have short exposure times with very good results. And the last but not least - the accurate tracking will not be an issue.

[AngryDonkey]

Great stuff! I have been thinking about building something like this recently so I'll be following this with interest. Please keep us updated!

[jimao22]

I'll do it, but for now is all we have. My friend is working to the ROR now and is almost done, but the tricky and interesting part will be the automation. When something relevant will occur, I will update this.

[AngryDonkey]

Great thanks!

(In my dreams) I am actually contemplating if it might be possible to build a stationary all sky camera that would be sensitive enough to detect something that you are describing. With the prices of CMOS cameras coming down it's not entirely inconceivable that I could build an all-sky rig with multiple cameras covering all or a large portion of the sky in reasonably good resolution.... It would have to be fairly big to fit all the cameras and lenses but they wouldn't necessarily all have to be in the same housing. Of course this would need some clever image stitching to create one image but I don't think that should be a problem in this day and age. And of course a custom version of my AllSkEye software to run 11 cameras... ?

In any case I would be very interested to see at what resolution you get good results once you have it up an running to see if this is a complete pipe dream.