Sky and Telescope - May 2015 - 68

Automating Equipment
nical Innovations and Foster Systems also carry weather
monitors for remote observatories.
* Computer-controlled Power Switches. These
switches allow you to execute scripts over the internet
to turn devices on and oﬀ during observatory startup
and shutdown, or force a reboot of a locked-up com-

Above: Autonomous imaging is performed by uploading projects with ACP. Projects can be scheduled well in advance, and
ACP will determine the best times to record data, often dividing
each clear night into segments to work on each project when
the targets are best placed in the sky.

Taking deep, high-resolution images such
as this example of the Lagoon Nebula, M8,
is standard fare for a remote observatory.
Automation allows imagers to concentrate
more on producing a great result and less
on the acquisition of data.

May 2015 sky & telescope

puter. This signiﬁcantly reduces your electricity usage
and protects your equipment from power surges. One
manufacturer, Digital Loggers, Inc. (digital-loggers.com),
produces the Web Power Switch 7, which provides eight
programmable power outlets that can be individually
controlled. Another option is the NP netBooter product
line by Synaccess (synaccess-net.com).
* Observatory Hosting. Finally, unless your automated observatory is in your own backyard, you'll need
a backup plan in case something fails and the observatory needs hands-on attention. This has given rise to
professional hosting services at dark-sky sites in both the
Northern and Southern hemispheres. Leasing space at
one of these facilities enables you to have your observatory at a truly dark site with a local support staﬀ to
maintain the observatory hardware. Simply perform a
web search for "observatory hosting" to get a current list
of companies that provide this service.

Is It Worth It?
So which software and hardware solutions are right
for you? It all depends on your goals and what equipment you may already own or have experience with.
You can also give some of these programs a test run -
the makers of ACP, CCDAutoPilot, and other software
vendors oﬀer limited trial periods. I tried a number of
products before settling on the solution that was right
for me. When I decided to automate my observatory, I
already owned everything I needed except ACP, MaxIm
DL, FocusMax, and a few other devices. An additional
investment of roughly $5,000 was required to completely
automate my observatory. This additional cost represents about 1/10 of the total cost of my observatory, yet
it enabled me to achieve a quantum leap in productivity. On many nights my observatory awakens to record
images after I'm asleep, particularly when conditions
clear long after I would have given up and closed down
for the night.
Since automating my observatory, astronomy as a
nocturnal activity for me has changed forever. My nights
are freed up to do other non-imaging pursuits again,
including observing. I can prepare projects in only a few
minutes during the day and load them into the observatory, often months in advance because the observatory
works on the backlog of pending projects.
Oﬀ-the-shelf automation is unleashing unprecedented gains in productivity from amateur observatories
worldwide. The ability to record valuable data throughout
the night whenever sky conditions permit is a relatively
low-cost upgrade that can beneﬁt most any type of astronomical imaging pursuit, and the best part is you'll no
longer have to lose any sleep over it! ✦
Robert Capon has been a dedicated amateur astronomer for
40 years. He can be contacted at w3dx@aol.com.

http://www.digital-loggers.com http://www.synaccess-net.com

Sky and Telescope - May 2015

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