Buying time on a professional telescope

I'm active in my high school's astronomy club- we have a planetarium on
campus that attracts a lot of interest in the sky. This year we are
looking to buy time on a professional telescope to follow up research
we will conduct throughout the school year.

How can we book time? Where is this service available? Is it
affordable? Is it worth it?

Try Telescopesineducation.com

They have a telescope operating remotely in Las Campanas, Chile. But
tha last I heard the funding runs out on it at the end of September,
which was yesterday.

TIE offered free remote telescope access to credentialed educational
institutions from 1992 to 2004 from the Mount Wilson Observatory in
California. However due to funding shortfalls and other issues, TIE
left the mountain in 2004.

At this time I know of no free remote telescopes that are available for
eductional use.
The TIE program is trying to get back on its feet in Arizona, but I do
not think it will be up for quite some time.

Matthew Ota
former TIE telescope operator



Brett wrote:
I'm active in my high school's astronomy club- we have a planetarium on
campus that attracts a lot of interest in the sky. This year we are
looking to buy time on a professional telescope to follow up research
we will conduct throughout the school year.

How can we book time? Where is this service available? Is it
affordable? Is it worth it?

Though a free session would be nice, we are willing to start
fundraisers in order to pay if necessary, but how much do these
sessions normally cost? Can it be done on a tight budget?

"Brett" wrote in message
ups.com...
Though a free session would be nice, we are willing to start
fundraisers in order to pay if necessary, but how much do these
sessions normally cost? Can it be done on a tight budget?
You don't give enough data to answer. What do you mean by 'time'. Visual
time, or imaging time?. Who are 'you'?. What is the intended 'use' of the
observations?. What do you want to observe?. How large a scope do you
need?. First thing to remember that few professional telescops these days
will have eyepieces, so 'time' on such scopes will always be 'imaging
time', not direct observation. If you are a school, or similar operation,
then there are scopes specifically setup to provide time for such
organisations. If your target, is an object that is already on a list for
an automated observatory, the data may well be available daily for free!.
This is true for targets like the Moon, and the brighter planets, as well
as for a limited number of DSO's. A typical example of a school/amateur
project, would be the Faulkes telescope project, which has two 2m
telescopes, one in Hawaii, and one in Australia, providing a number of
timeslots free to UK schools. There are then a number of 'discretionary'
free slots for UK astronomy societies, with charged for slots for
astronomy societies and schools from other countries. There are a number
of similar operations in the US, and Canada. The total cost of telescope
time, will vary massively with different instruments,but can vary from
perhaps $50/hour, to several thousand dollars per hour for a large scope.
The Keck for example, is calculated at just under $50,000/night...

Best Wishes

I think your best bet is to contact some club or indifidual who has a
robotic scope on the internet. Do a Google search. In two years my
club hope to have something like this going in fact the stakes went in the
ground last week for our new building and domes ....

Search the internet and ask people - you probably will find something.
Jerry



Brett wrote:

I'm active in my high school's astronomy club- we have a planetarium on
campus that attracts a lot of interest in the sky. This year we are
looking to buy time on a professional telescope to follow up research
we will conduct throughout the school year.

How can we book time? Where is this service available? Is it
affordable? Is it worth it?