After you register with us and we approve your registration you have greater access to our system. You can then
purchase credits, which you use to schedule the images you want to take for an observing run. You have
control over managing your account: check which jobs you have scheduled, check what jobs are completed, and
download your completed images. In addition, you can set up “Affiliates” for your account. Affiliates can
use credits that you allocate to them and manage their accounts under your primary account. This is a
convenient tool for professors, teachers, astronomy clubs, and individuals to manage an account among many people.
You can easily schedule to take images of objects using our Observation Request Form.
This form contains an extensive list of catalogs with hundreds of thousands of objects
that you can choose from and select for your observations. On the Observation Request
Form you can set up multiple exposures and sequences of your objects selecting among
the available filters. You can also set a specific RA and DEC coordinate in the sky to
have the telescope slew to and track instead of selecting an object from the catalogs.
In addition, you can set specific UTD dates for your schedules to run on that night and
that night only.
When planning your imaging sessions you should be aware of the general specifications of our observatory systems
to make the best use of your time and to get the results you desire. You can quickly refer to the specifications
for each observatory at the following observatory site pages on our web site:
To make the best use of your valuable imaging time you should carefully and deliberately plan for the images you take.
The position of an object in the sky, the local time, and the date together determine which objects you might consider
for a specific observing run. Ideally, you want to image objects when they are as high in the sky as possible to look
though the least amount of atmosphere and attain the best seeing for that night. The highest point in the sky an
object can reach at any location is when it transits (when the object crosses the meridian). After a transit, an
object gradually gets lower again in the sky. The good news is that the SSON master
scheduling program automatically schedules the timing of your images during the most optimal time possible
for a selected night. In other words the scheduling program sets your images to be taken as close to transit as possible.
You also should concentrate on objects that transit high enough in the sky at the latitude of the observatory
site you choose for imaging. For example, an object that never transits higher than 25 degrees
altitude above the horizon would not be a good choice for imaging because the seeing for an object that low in
the sky, looking through so much atmosphere, would likely be very poor.
You can easily avoid these pitfalls with a little planning before submitting your observation requests.
Using online or computer planetarium programs you can quickly check that an object will be in a reasonably
position for a given date and observatory location.
Also, check out the SNR and Exposure Times
section of our web site for more information to help you plan your imaging sessions.
The SSON telescopes are powerful scientific astronomical imaging systems designed to provide
a relatively wide field of view, excellent quantum efficiency, low noise and excellent photometric
capabilities. These characteristics open up many observing possibilities to our users. You should also consider the following points
for planning your observing session.
- Typically, the SSON telescopes with highly sensitive CCD cameras
are not able to take exposures of very bright objects such as the major planets, the brightest stars, and the moon.
- When doing photometry work determine what signal to noise ratio (SNR) is needed for your
project and set your exposure times accordingly. Keep in mind that exposure times to attain
a desired SNR vary for each telescope and filter. High precision photometry typically requires a SNR of 100
or more, while you can get accurate astrometry at much lower SNRs (as low as 10 to 20).
Most software packages with photometry capabilities will calculate the SNR of objects in your images.
For planning purposes, you can use some of the CCD SNR calculators found online beforehand.
- The maximum exposure time you can set for images is 300 seconds (5 minutes) on the current telescopes
within the network. To attain greater integration (exposure) times you can stack your images using one of
the many available commercial or free software packages. You can stack as many images as you
want to create total exposure times of an hour or longer. The CCD cameras on
SSON telescopes generate very low noise. Thus stacking images greatly increases the SNR while adding
very little additional noise. Finally stacking images with shorter exposure times produces better
FWHM (full width at half maximum) star images and helps keep brighter objects from “blooming”
(filling the pixel wells and overflowing) enabling better photometry of brighter objects.
- Calibration frames (images) are critical for getting the best quality, least noisy,
data from your images and for creating the best esthetically appealing images for show as
well. By default, we apply the calibration frames to your images saving you a great deal
of time and bandwidth. This service greatly streamlines your image taking process and
saves you steps that can introduce errors if you make mistakes.
Many of the best high-quality color images you see in Astronomy magazine,
Sky and Telescope magazine and web sites online, are created using filtered
images and combining them with one of the many available image processing software programs.
One of the most popular and effective color image processing techniques is called LRGB for
Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue color processing in which clear, red filter, green filter,
and blue filter images are combined together to produce a color image. The B, V, and R filters
on the SSO telescope approximate well with B, G, and R filters respectively and together with
using our Clear (no filter) setting produce excellent LRGB color processing results.
Also many advanced astro-imagers create interesting and beautiful images combining data taken with narrowband filters such as
H-alpha, OIII, Sulfur and so on. You have access to these types f filters on some of the SSON telescopes.
For many of us doing science is a means and an end in itself. It can be very fulfilling and rewarding. You can
discover new things, analyze existing systems, and simply experiment and explore using the SSON telescopes.
There are many potential projects that come to mind including the following abbreviated list.