Making astronomical observations usually involves buying an
expensive telescope, learning how to use it, waiting for a cloud-free night,
doing a long time exposure, then despairing when your photos do not match the
quality of the ones you can download from NASA.com for free.
Slooh took this photo of
the Great Orion nebula—a cosmic “nursery” that contains dozens of newborn
“baby” suns.
Now all that has changed by virtue of Slooh.com, where
anyone can sign up to point a sophisticated telescope at nearly any celestial
object, take a time-lapse photograph, then download the stunning resulting
images. There is even a chance that you might discover a comet, supernova,
asteroid or other celestial object.
"Our most avid members have already discovered a comet,
have confirmed several new supernova and just six weeks ago were able to
observe an asteroid that was just 20 meters across as it flew past the
Earth," says Rick Lamb, president of Slooh.com. "Slooh is also being
adopted in schools from grade school, where it introduces students to
astronomy, to high school, where it illustrates certain mathematical
principles, all the way up to the college curricula at several
universities."
Slooh.com lets anyone do live, hands-on astronomy (while
sipping hot chocolate in your pajamas) by operating its own worldwide network
of observatories.
Slooh's main observatories are in four mountaintop locations—two
in separate domes in the Canary Islands (Spain off the coast of Morocco); one
in Victoria, west of Melbourne (Australia); and one near Santiago (Chile). The
networked telescopes in all four locations stream live images from those
observatories every night, often with live audio commentary and chat.
Each location has three telescopes—an "all sky"
telescope that does not move, but points straight up to show a wide angle view
of the entire sky at that location. The other two telescopes, one with a wide
angle field-of-view and one with a telephoto lens for making close-up images,
can be pointed by members at any astronomical object in their range.
Most of the astronomical objects of interest are already
slated for viewing by one of Slooh's telescopes, but any member can add new
objects to the schedule. Once chosen, Slooh slews over to your chosen
astronomical object at the chosen time, spends 5 minutes setting up and taking
a time-exposure digital photograph, then uploads the image to the archive,
where any member following that mission can enjoy it. Members can also choose
from among different image processing alternatives to enhance their photos.
Since 2003, Slooh has taken more than 1.2 million photographs for its members.
Slooh also hosts well-known astronomers to do online radio
shows about all things space. Check the schedule of upcoming events here.
