2023-01-08 | David Pearson: My Remote Observatory Scheduler & Control

If your telescope is at a remote site, keeping your imaging plate full every night is time consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if a computer program would do that for you?! During this presentation, David will discuss how to implement such a program and how he integrated it for full unattended, multiple-night, observatory imaging/equipment control. He will also discuss how he generates the imaging objects text file that will be scheduled on a nightly basis. Data will be shown that was collected over many nights for Moon effects during Ha imaging, filter vs altitude effects, and statistics of the amount of time for a 1 deg C temperature change.
David Pearson started his astronomy life at age 6 with his grandmother showing him the Big and Little Dipper, and getting to see Sputnik. He obtained his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and worked at Rockwell/Boeing for 38 years on multiple space projects. David built an 8" f/20 Dall-Kirkham telescope (from parts) on a Cave Optical Equatorial mount and attempted film imaging with a piggybacked Olympus OM-1. He later got interested in large Dobsonians, purchasing a used 13" coulter optical dob, later upgrading to a Star Splitter 20", and later upgrading again with a servo cat motorized GOTO system. During this time period, Mr. Pearson started an astronomy club at work, and started teaching visual astronomy class for continuing education at local Junior colleges consisting with class room talks and weekend star parties with the 20" manual dob. He has been teaching the Beginner's class for the Orange County astronomers club since 2005. In 2010, David had a roll-off observatory with warming room built for the 20" dob, which he later expanded for two imaging piers. In 2019, he moved his 12" RC & Astro-Physics 1200 mount to a remote group site using CCDCommander as the imaging script. David has since replaced CCDCommander with his own Window’s Remote Observatory Scheduler and Controller program.
David's website: astrodwp.com/
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