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Welcome to The CSU Remote Telescope

This project is an initiative of Dr. David McKinnon, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University Bathurst. The project delivers primary and secondary schools with learning packages developed for the curricula on Earth and Space.

Over the past 8yrs of running the CSU Remote Telescope, we have received a number of educational and excellence awards. They can be view here.

Navigate your way around the site via the menu on the left. You can also view a short movie about the telescope; located below.

 

Telescope Status: OFFLINE
Date: 17/06/2009
Time: 19.10 (AEST)
Current Weather: CLOUDY COMPLETE COVER.
Outlook: THIS MONTH CANCELLED DUE TO BAD WEATHER.
CHECK OUT THE IYA Broadcast website and archives of images below.
Remember to refresh your browser for latest status

 

International Year Of Astronomy 2009
IYA2009 Logo

Each month during 2009, the CSU Remote Telescope will web-cast images of the southern night sky on specific nights. Each month, there will be a themed 1.5 hour observation run. The images will broadcast according to two criteria:

  1. Special events such as the availability of the Moon and planets at particular times and,
  2. According to requests that will be able to be submitted from the CSU Remote telescope website. Requests for images should be in keeping with the theme for the observation session. The themes will cover such topics as: the Moon, planets, nebulae, open clusters, globular clusters and galaxies during the year. In general, the themes are designed to be run twice during the year. 

Full details of the dates on which the webcasts will occur are available on the Calendar at the IYA2009 website (http://www.astronomy2009.org.au/ and view the Events Calendar). Weather updates will be provided ahead of each broadcast. If the event does not happen on the date as specified on the calendar, a second and third attempt will be made on the following two nights. Should these fail, that particular month will be cancelled.

The black and white images will be taken by two devices: a wide-angle camera attached to an 80mm wide-field telescope and, a camera at the prime focus of an F/6.3 12” telescope. These will be updated approximately each minute and displayed in almost real time. The images will also be stored on the CSU Remote Telescope web server as jpegs for people to download.

At the same time, an infra-red webcam will show what is happening at the observatory where the observers will be interacting with the world-wide audience through a specially designed java-scripted web-page to allow requests to be made.
 
Observation Schedule
Date Time Objects
Jan 4-6th 21:00 - 23:00 (AEDT) Venus
Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Feb 3-5th 21:00 - 23:00 (AEDT) Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Saturn
Mar 6-8th 21:00 - 23:00 (AEDT) Messier Objects
Moon
Saturn
Apr 13-15th 19:00 - 21:00 (AEST) Messier Objects
Saturn
May 14-16th 19:00 - 21:00 (AEST) Moon
Mainly Galaxies
Saturn
Jun 16-18th 19:00 - 21:00 (AEST) Milky Way Objects
Saturn
Jul 27-29th 19:00 - 21:00 (AEST) Milky Way Objects
Aug 25-27th 19:00 - 21:00 (AEST) Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Sep 25-27th 18:00 - 22:00 (AEST) Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Oct 28-30th 18:00 - 22:00 (AEST) Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Nov 21-23rd 21:00 - 23:00 (AEDT) Moon
Deep Sky Objects
Dec 12-14th 21:00 - 23:00 (AEDT) Deep Sky Objects
 
Webcast
Launch webcast & archive window
 
 

 

Total Lunar Eclipse - Live Images
Total Lunar Eclipse

On the 28th of August 2007 the CSU Remote Telescope broadcast live images of the total lunar eclipse.

Videos of the eclipse can be found below. We have compressed the full 5 hour eclipse into 1.5mins.
You can also find all still images, one every 20sec, in the archive.

 
Video: Full Res(11MB) - Small(1.5MB)
Archive Images
 
 
We would like to say a special thanks to the School of Communications and Philip Glen for the loan of the main camera.

 

See the Telescope in Action
Watch a 2 minute video about the CSU Remote Telescope, click one of the links below.
Broadband Stream - 512kbps+
Dialup Stream - 56kpbs
Download & Play - 7.5Mb

Windows Media Player 9+ is required to play WMV files.

 

Many thanks to our sponsors & partners:

 

 
    © 2009 CSU Remote Telescope
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