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This was essentially the Ph.D. thesis project of a good friend of mine in grad school: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~assassin/index.shtml http://www.ast

This was essentially the Ph.D. thesis project of a good friend of mine in grad school: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~assassin/index.shtml http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~assassin/index.shtml Each of the telescopes is an off-the-shelf commercial telephoto lens hooked up to a CCD, for a total cost of ~$100,000 per telescope. I'm a little fuzzy on the details now, but I think they have something like four cameras on a single mount, and sites in Hawaii and Chile with plans to put another mount in South Africa (or maybe Australia?). The eventual goal will be to have continuous coverage of the sky, and new images of any given patch of the sky every ~3 days or so. They made a bit of press a while back for discovering the most luminous supernova ever, ASASSN-15lh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASASSN-15lh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASASSN-15lh

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
$100,000 is too much to scale up without serious funding. I'd guess most of that was wasted on a scientific camera that is priced for low volume sales. Mr. McKeon captured useful images here on a ~$3000 telescope and a $230 1.2Mpix camera. A spectacular system could be put together with mostly off the shelf parts using a 4K CCD camera, alt-azimuth mount, coupling optics and filters, and data handling for $20K. Put 5 telescopes at 20 sites and you have up to 100 nightly video streams to comb through for scientific data. All for $2M. Less than what many coaches make in a year.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  Is the $100,000 just the telescope or does it include software, the expertise to setup and maintain, and all the other peripherals I imagine it'd need?
- antognini 10y ago
  I don't remember what the scientific requirements were that necessitated the $100,000 lens (which isn't really scientific --- it's mostly sold to professional photographers), but given how limited funding is I'm sure that if they could have gotten away with a cheaper lens they would have. (Thinking back, the lens may have been closer to $60,000. It wasn't my project so I can't really remember.)
  - phonon 10y ago
    Each ASAS-SN telescope uses 4 commercial camera lenses, at about $10k each. http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Lenses/2171/AF-S-NIKKOR-400mm-f%252F2.8G-ED-VR.html http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Len... With one detector, at about $40k. https://telescopes.net/store/pl23042-1-bi-proline-series-e2v-ccd230-42-1-143-back-illuminated-midband.html https://telescopes.net/store/pl23042-1-bi-proline-series-e2v...
    - dr_zoidberg 10y ago
      There are cheaper lenses and CCDs which might strike a better price/performance ratio too -- I think that was the original thought behind saying "100k is too expensive!". Of course, those items you linked are beautiful machines of precision and quality. But maybe with a cheaper system, more targets can be tracked at the same time. So a $1k lens with a $1k sensor in a $500 tracker gets you 40 "telescopes" for $100k instead of 1~2.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Something permenant, with supplied utilities (power+hvac+data), secured behind locked doors, with a reasonable view of the sky, on a university campus .... you are pretty near to 100k before spending a dime on the actual hardware. And then double every number if you want it under retractable roof/cover of some sort. One-off temporary or unofficial rigs on rooftops can be cheap. But a system of installed, standardized, telescopes on university campuses won't be build on a shoestring. If you are going to do it, get the lens that makes it worth the while.
- mirekrusin 10y ago
  Some kind of recycling programme for cameras and smartphones could lower the cost. Maybe.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

$100,000 is too much to scale up without serious funding. I'd guess most of that was wasted on a scientific camera that is priced for low volume sales. Mr. McKeon captured useful images here on a ~$3000 telescope and a $230 1.2Mpix camera. A spectacular system could be put together with mostly off the shelf parts using a 4K CCD camera, alt-azimuth mount, coupling optics and filters, and data handling for $20K. Put 5 telescopes at 20 sites and you have up to 100 nightly video streams to comb through for scientific data. All for $2M. Less than what many coaches make in a year.

ben_jones 10y ago
Is the $100,000 just the telescope or does it include software, the expertise to setup and maintain, and all the other peripherals I imagine it'd need?
antognini 10y ago
I don't remember what the scientific requirements were that necessitated the $100,000 lens (which isn't really scientific --- it's mostly sold to professional photographers), but given how limited funding is I'm sure that if they could have gotten away with a cheaper lens they would have. (Thinking back, the lens may have been closer to $60,000. It wasn't my project so I can't really remember.)
- phonon 10y ago
  Each ASAS-SN telescope uses 4 commercial camera lenses, at about $10k each. http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Lenses/2171/AF-S-NIKKOR-400mm-f%252F2.8G-ED-VR.html http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Len... With one detector, at about $40k. https://telescopes.net/store/pl23042-1-bi-proline-series-e2v-ccd230-42-1-143-back-illuminated-midband.html https://telescopes.net/store/pl23042-1-bi-proline-series-e2v...
  - dr_zoidberg 10y ago
    There are cheaper lenses and CCDs which might strike a better price/performance ratio too -- I think that was the original thought behind saying "100k is too expensive!". Of course, those items you linked are beautiful machines of precision and quality. But maybe with a cheaper system, more targets can be tracked at the same time. So a $1k lens with a $1k sensor in a $500 tracker gets you 40 "telescopes" for $100k instead of 1~2.
sandworm101 10y ago
Something permenant, with supplied utilities (power+hvac+data), secured behind locked doors, with a reasonable view of the sky, on a university campus .... you are pretty near to 100k before spending a dime on the actual hardware. And then double every number if you want it under retractable roof/cover of some sort. One-off temporary or unofficial rigs on rooftops can be cheap. But a system of installed, standardized, telescopes on university campuses won't be build on a shoestring. If you are going to do it, get the lens that makes it worth the while.
mirekrusin 10y ago
Some kind of recycling programme for cameras and smartphones could lower the cost. Maybe.