5 ms·
Telescope Ranchers
- genpfault 5mo agoNot, in fact, optical interferometry :(
- ck2 5mo agosadly won't be possible for anything serious next decade as each space trillionaire and country launches their own 10,000+ constellations sky will be constantly twinkling, will be weird we'll have to switch to space telescopes above LEO https://satellitemap.space https://satellitemap.space
- zippyman55 5mo agoI’m seeking funding to open up a rail gun ranch where you can sit in your lawn chair and blow satellites out of the sky.
- tedd4u 5mo agoProbably legal in Texas? If it's directly over "your land?"
- dylan604 5mo agoIf your application says it is meant to hunt feral hogs, then they will allow it.
- zippyman55 5mo agoThis may be a good plan B pivot! Join now and get a free lawn chair!
- throwup238 5mo agoFeral hogs IN SPAAAAACE!
- ck2 5mo agoI'm thinking of "space roombas" that glide around and bump all the sats in LEO into the atmosphere like a game of pool Only problem is they are toxic as they burn up and create a lot of pollution * https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-pollution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit... (too bad gravity is impossible to overcome cheaply or do the opposite and yeet into sun)
- dredmorbius 5mo agoIf you have to yeet space trash to a gravitational well, Jupiter is probably the more attractive option. Lower delta-V, still a large well, and so long as you get reasonably close, orbital decay should solve the problem eventually. For de-orbiting LEO satellites, electrodynamic tethers is probably the most viable active method: "Study on electrodynamic tether system for space debris removal" <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576504002176 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...>
- adrianN 5mo agoKessler‘s farm?
- pfdietz 5mo agoLasers would probably be more practical. Maybe a whole array of lasers w. telescopes? At (say) 500 km, a 20 cm aperture would have a spot size of maybe 50 cm. So let's take that telescope array, hook a kW laser to each one, and roast some LEO satellites? (Note: this is not an actual suggestion this be done.)
- zippyman55 5mo agoI know you are joking on this one, as I was on mine. But with people being arrested for shining pet toy lasers at objects, best everyone stay clear of this one.
- pfdietz 5mo agoIt's more a thought experiment on perhaps how easily this could be done.
- ninjalanternshk 5mo agoI’m working on a DaaS startup (drone as a service) so maybe I’ll locate next to you and your customers can blow drones out of the sky and mine will keep having to replace theirs.
- zippyman55 5mo agoI like where you are going with this. Can you offer “hardened” drones for the advanced players?
- Retric 5mo agoYou misunderstand the issue. It’s a significant problem for some kinds of observations and largely irrelevant to others. Satellites don’t include light sources and there’s nothing to illuminate them when in earth’s shadow. In order to interfere with light based astronomy they need to be outside of earths shadow and someone needs to be actively taking a picture of that chunk of sky. As these satellites orbit close to earth almost the entire sky is clear near solar midnight. Major ground based telescopes can also add a shutter to block light detection for the fraction of a second a satellite would interfere. Basically at increasing magnification you’re looking at an ever smaller percentage of the sky which means the odds of a satellite, even one of millions, being in the shot for a given second is low. It’s still an issue, but being 99.X% as effective is good enough not to be a major concern. Where it’s a concern is whole sky observation where you can’t easily add a shutter and losing a significant portion of the sky every night is a real problem. Amateur astronomy has the same basic options, but will often run into avoidable issues.
- theresistor 5mo agoIn most amateur imaging you can trade time for quality. By stacking enough images, satellite trails get averaged out of the final image. Very high end amateurs get pissy about it because they paid a lot of money for high end equipment to minimize imaging times, but for the rest of us it’s not a huge impediment as we already needed lots of subframes to get high SNR anyways.
- dredmorbius 5mo agoAveraging isn't the only option. It's possible to use other image-processing techniques which look at outlier values. This is way outside my area of expertise, but I believe sigma clipping is one of the standard go-tos, see: <https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Sigma-clipping.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Sigma...>. More generally, you're clipping outliers: <https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Clipping-outliers.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Clipp...>. This applies not only to satellite tracks, but meteors, cosmic rays, and other artefacts introduced into image capture. The techniques should be generally applicable, though for those who are specifically exploring transitory phenomena, this introduces additional challenges.
- db48x 5mo agoIt’s worth noting that the latest trillionaire lowered launch costs by ~10×. It has never been cheaper to launch a telescope into space. I’m surprised that no universities have launched their own space observatories. Harvard has a $50 billion endowment, but all they ever seem to spend it on is more administrators. They could launch a dozen space telescopes without making a dent.
- jmward01 5mo agoWe need more of this. Thanks for making the world more awesome!
- solomonneas 5mo agoI would never have thought of this, but it is really cool. Living in the city with light pollution, we can see a dozen or so on the best nights. What an ingenious business idea.
- theresistor 5mo agoYou’d be amazed what even a small smart telescope can see even in Bortle 9 urban skies. I have one of the mentioned SeeStar smart telescopes, and have been quite successful in taking photos of both galaxies and nebulas from the rooftop of my apartment building in the middle of a city. Sure, it takes time. Sure, it would be faster/better under darker skies. But it’s not impossible!
- gehsty 5mo agoModern stacking algo negate this entirely for amateur photographers
- elictronic 5mo agoColter Mccorkindale’s comment is the best part. “Sooo....the stars at night really are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas?”
- mattlondon 5mo ago> from as little as 99 USD a month > 550 telescopes So about ~55 to 60k USD a month to just have some telescopes on your land? Nice little earner.
- js2 5mo agoHe's got 10 barns with retractable roofs to maintain, plus he offers maintenance of the scopes themselves. On top of that, it sounds like a full time business he's running. But yeah, a very nice business.
- thatoneengineer 5mo agoI'm sure it's a lot of work for him, mostly maintenance and cleaning. Also it sounds like the remote operation hardware and software are provided by him-- that can't be trivial and probably means he doesn't break even on a given telescope for a few months at least. Plus whatever it costs him to recruit new customers. I bet he makes a good living on his labor and whatever capital he has tied up in the land, but it doesn't sound like an easy business.
- rtkwe 5mo agoI think it's literally just the pier, power and an ethernet connection provided and you use the software of the mount and image sensor combo you own through their internet.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5mo agoCustomer support. Don't forget customer support.
- Aaargh20318 5mo ago> Also it sounds like the remote operation hardware and software are provided by him As a backyard astrophotographer, this hardware and software is pretty much standard even if you don’t send your equipment to a remote site and is part of the kit you send to the remote site. While you can still manually point your telescope if you wanted, I don’t think many who are in the hobby still do this. Most people will use so-called ‘GoTo’ mounts. You basically tell it where to point and it will automatically do so and keep tracking that location (to compensate for the rotation of our planet). It’s a little bit more involved than I’m describing it but not much.
- jimmy76615 5mo agoReally great idea! But one still has to buy a telescope and send it to this guy, I think it would be cool if one could just rent everything at once. For non-serious people that have a lot of money that they would like to put to use looking at the stars. Or maybe a time-share like concept.
- js2 5mo agoNothing stopping you from buying a few scopes, sending them to him, then subletting access. :-)
- phrotoma 5mo agoAstronomy arbitrage!?
- theresistor 5mo agoiTelescope does exactly what you’re outlining. There used to be a few others but I think they have mostly died out. I assume the economics don’t really work out.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- rtkwe 4mo agoIt feels like a relatively small market niche, they're aiming for people interested enough in astronomy to pay for telescope time but not interested enough or unable to own their own scope in either their back yard or at a remote dark sky site.
- rkagerer 5mo agoYou mean AaaS (Astronomy as a Service)
- gcheong 5mo agoIt does exist: https://www.slooh.com https://www.slooh.com
- asxndu 5mo agoWhat do people do with this astronomical data? Why do they pay for this?
- js2 5mo agoAstrophotography is a hobby like any other. People enjoy capturing their own images of the universe. Most hobbies with gear have setup costs and it's not unusual for that to be in the several thousand dollar range, and maintenance costs. $100-400/month for a hobby isn't all that much and it gives you exclusive access to your own scope in ideal skies that you can operate from your home.
- asxndu 5mo agoCool, makes sense.
- whartung 5mo agoI'm putting one of the modern "Smart Scopes" on my Christmas list this year. I had a friend with a 10" Meade with which not much happened. Just a bear to lug around and set up and mess with, not even including trying bumble through getting astrophotography started. But the new-ish Smart Scopes looks fun and accessible, so gonna see if I can get one of those to play with.
- js2 5mo agoI've had an 8" Celestron SCT since I spent my Bar Mitzvah money on it shortly after I got hooked on astronomy by Haley's comet. There were no smart scopes then and the Miami skies didn't lend themselves to astrophotography. Still, I tried. I still have that scope. It's on a wedge mount with motorized but manual tracking. Even an 8" is a pain to drag out and you really have to be dedicated because it turns out most folks don't have the patience to spend much time outside looking through a 1.25" eye piece. So when you drag it out, expect to be spending alone time with you and the sky. Still, I'm glad I have it. It's good for looking at the moon and planets, and the sun with correct filter. I still drag it out now and again. I'll never take the sorts of photos you can find easily on the internet. So I prefer to look at the universe with my own eyes. That's still exciting.
- orbital-decay 5mo agoFar from unique! There were and are telescope hosters in the Atacama Desert, which is as good as it can possibly be for the amateurs.
- RyJones 5mo agomostly unrelated, but over the last few weeks I've gone down a rabbit hole having claude write scripts to label videos I shoot through night vision. If you want to see my progress (mostly gated by the sky): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOgT48pM4GctL_nuv37vcydk1H2Z5Vn5q https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOgT48pM4GctL_nuv37vc... I want to get it pointing out overflights and satellites by name, but I'm not there yet.
- password4321 5mo agoPrevious discussions on remote telescopes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45271108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45271108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44741078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44741078
- mhb 5mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48533872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48533872
- fleeno 5mo agoI have a small scope down there, and it's great! I get a lot more use out of it being permanently setup in a dark sky site, rather than use it at my suburban house. I'm currently doing observations of variable stars just for fun. Going to load up an observing plan for tonight shortly!