Quote:
Originally Posted by herr_oberst
Thought some of you might be interested in this....
A friend of mine is doing a solo bicycle ride across America right now. He updates his blog nightly and today he pitched his tent in Marathon Texas. Here's one of the things he saw he saw and commented on:
(Here's the link to his blog if you're curious, but the below image is the only part of the ride (so far) that's astronomy related)
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1mr&page_id=623553&v=y
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It's a telescope farm, there are probably 8, maybe 10 in the country? Basically, you can buy a pad, build a small automated dome, and run remotely, just as he said. Small colleges and rich amateurs do it, as well as some asteroid or comet hunters.
My old friend Mark Trueblood built one of the first, he wrote early software to automate a scope, camera, dome, filter wheel, etc.