The main goal of the «CHILESCOPE» project is to provide astronomical society with access to high quality equipment under dark sky with sub second seeing in southern hemisphere. «Astronomy on demand» is our philosophy. This means user gets access to web portal and develops his own observing program using friendly interface. Schedule time for observing sessions, specify telescope, camera, filters, exposures and some other parameters and astronomical data will be automatically downloaded to your hard drive. No investments for expensive equipment, no spending time for long visits on site, no work with hardware and software to make setup do what you want it to do. Just develop your observing program and get result! We guaranty money back in case of system malfunction, bad weather and other cases that can affect your session. Please read Deep Sky Imaging Manual for details: Manual
THE ALGORITHM USE
In order to use CHILESCOPE services you need to follow 4 steps :
1
SIGN UP
Sign up to enter Member's area. Get login and password
2
PAY
Get acquainted with observing time pricing and methods of payment. Pay attention to our cumulative and Moon phase discounts.
Make the payment checking if the amount covers your planned session. You can check your balance and all transactions any time you want using our billing system
3
PLAN
Choose the object you plan to observe and think of best session strategy. We suggest to use any astronomical software or planner to know the best date and time to observe the object, coordinates, field size of the object etc.
Using our scheduler check if the required instrument is available in the planned date and time period of session. Check if the telescope field of view fits the size of the object. Now it is good time to think of center of field to make required photo composition.
Proceed to «Sessions & Plans» section. Select the telescope, date, start time and duration of you session according to you session strategy. Give the name to your session. Intersections with already booked sessions (if any) will be automatically shown on the chart. Also the system automatically checks if the session is within the dark time of the night and if your balance covers the duration of the session you plan.
4
IMAGING
Create your observing plan. Choose exposure time, number of exposures in each filter, filters to use and some other options of the observing plan.
Save your plans and sessions. They will be automatically executed in date and time you have planned. In case of bad weather conditions the session would not be started and balance will be deposited accordingly. Same thing will happen in case of any system malfunction.
5
YOUR FILES
After session end download your object images and all necessary calibration images to start astrophoto processing.
For more detailed instruction how to create sessions and plans please download the PDF manual:
