[天文书籍]RemoteObservatoryAnnualReview2012-PartI.pdfVIP

Remote Observatory Annual Review 2012 (Part I) 1. Overview It has been a year since my remote observatory in Australia started operation in late 2011. I believe it is a good time to review how the project goes and also to summarise what I have learned during the past year. Overall, I would say the project has been extremely successful and far exceeds what I originally expected. There were obviously all sorts of hiccups along the way. But considering the complexity of operating a remote observatory, it has been much smoother than what I have imagined. Everyone who has attempted to do deep sky imaging knows that it is no easy task to get a decent image. Although the objects are always there waiting to be imaged and the entire process seems mechanical, many things can go wrong and will go wrong during the process. Solving all these expected and unexpected problems is a major part of the fun for this challenging hobby. Now consider all your equipments are thousands of kilometers away, try to make it all work is a daunting task. I believe the most important reason for my success is due to the fact that I started the project at the right time. Only until very recently did all the related hardware and software components become mature and readily available to amateurs. Without these building blocks, it is almost impossible to construct a highly automated remote observatory by an amateur. I think we are lucky to be living in this era and be able to greatly extend the imaging possibilities via building our own remote observatories. In this review, Ill try to examine some of the individual components to reveal what Ive learned. I hope this can be useful to someone who is interested in building his own remote observatory. First of all, below are some imaging statistics for