Any Telescope.live users?

[Astrovetteman]

Somehow to me it still feels like cheating, you, simply download someone elses one click observations, although for $30-60 an hour you can request them to schedule a imaging run, they decide the date and time and get you the images.
With SLOOH I think it is closer to your own scope, you yourself have to decide the date and the time, you determine where in the sky you will image it. You can schedule to move the scope either up to 7 days in advance or within a few minutes of when you want to image, you can then actually watch the imaging run as each filter grabs the photons, that is really neat. Also you get what you get, some are ruined by wind or satellites or clouds, no guarantees of quality, just like at home. It takes work to get a 1 hour 20 minutes exposure which is what most Telescope.live one click observations are. I want as close to using my own gear as possible and I think that is SLOOH

All that said I was and am really impressed with the images you can get from Telescope.live

Hey, I struggled with the same feelings that you have!! But, I know, what my rig is capable of and Telescope Live offers scopes and cameras I could only dream of owning! Don't get me wrong....I still love getting my stuff out and doing it myself (God knows I've got enough $$ in it and I ain't gonna let it sit in the garage)....BUT I'm not getting any younger and hauling out a 200 lb rig and the computer cart isn't as easy as it used to be, especially when it's 10 degrees outside. After doing this AP hobby for the last 10 years, I've learned that the most rewarding thing is processing a beautiful image and there's a WHOLE BUNCH of great targets that I have no possibility of ever imaging from Terre Haute, Indiana. So that's another reason that I subscribe to Telescope Live. I see your point about being able to "control" your imaging session and I might take a look at Slooh, cause that sounds kind of neat but remote imaging is still remote imaging. There's a lot of data from Telescope Live that I throw out, just like the data I take myself....no service is perfect! I guess it all boils down to what's right for each person, and if you like Slooh then, by all means, stay with it! But, like Dan said, try out Telescope Live....I love it....especially in the winter when there's only 3 or 4 days/month that it's clear!
Anyway, that's my 2 cents, Merry Christmas!!
Tom

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Somehow to me it still feels like cheating, you, simply download someone elses one click observations, although for $30-60 an hour you can request them to schedule a imaging run, they decide the date and time and get you the images.
With SLOOH I think it is closer to your own scope, you yourself have to decide the date and the time, you determine where in the sky you will image it. You can schedule to move the scope either up to 7 days in advance or within a few minutes of when you want to image, you can then actually watch the imaging run as each filter grabs the photons, that is really neat. Also you get what you get, some are ruined by wind or satellites or clouds, no guarantees of quality, just like at home. It takes work to get a 1 hour 20 minutes exposure which is what most Telescope.live one click observations are. I want as close to using my own gear as possible and I think that is SLOOH

All that said I was and am really impressed with the images you can get from Telescope.live

Hey, I struggled with the same feelings that you have!! But, I know, what my rig is capable of and Telescope Live offers scopes and cameras I could only dream of owning! Don't get me wrong....I still love getting my stuff out and doing it myself (God knows I've got enough $$ in it and I ain't gonna let it sit in the garage)....BUT I'm not getting any younger and hauling out a 200 lb rig and the computer cart isn't as easy as it used to be, especially when it's 10 degrees outside. After doing this AP hobby for the last 10 years, I've learned that the most rewarding thing is processing a beautiful image and there's a WHOLE BUNCH of great targets that I have no possibility of ever imaging from Terre Haute, Indiana. So that's another reason that I subscribe to Telescope Live. I see your point about being able to "control" your imaging session and I might take a look at Slooh, cause that sounds kind of neat but remote imaging is still remote imaging. There's a lot of data from Telescope Live that I throw out, just like the data I take myself....no service is perfect! I guess it all boils down to what's right for each person, and if you like Slooh then, by all means, stay with it! But, like Dan said, try out Telescope Live....I love it....especially in the winter when there's only 3 or 4 days/month that it's clear!
Anyway, that's my 2 cents, Merry Christmas!!
Tom

If you are going to try out SLOOH watch out they don't have a free trial. Also they take ALOT more work than T.live their imaging runs, called missions, are 5 minutes, 3 actual minutes of imaging time for all scopes except the 20" Planewave, that is 10 minutes, 6 minutes of imaging so it takes a lot of missions to build up 80 minutes of images. They can get as good an image as a one click but it is much more work.

I have the Bronze level at TL after my free week and month with the Silver. And will continue to do one clicks

My skies here in SE Massachusetts are bortle 7.5 on a good night as I live 300 feet from a major mall and the Norwood Automile (15 dealers). Also at age 68 and bad arthritis I have trouble just getting out to my backyard. I keep my scope setup on a patio year round under a couple Telegizmos covers so at least I don't have to roll it out

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Oh and one more thing you can do with Slooh, you can have the scopes open on your desktop and watch any of the missions as they happen and there is a Camera icon and you can "snap" a mission and get the fits files from it. Right now I have 4 windows open one on each of the scopes currently operating. THat way you can see what it is looking at and grab the files. It is interesting watching what others are looking at and imaging.

[pakarinen]

SLOOH scope live view doesn't update when I use FireFox, although it might just be the FF version I have.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

SLOOH scope live view doesn't update when I use FireFox, although it might just be the FF version I have.

I use Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, the Edge for the live views

[pakarinen]

Might be time for me to give up on SLOOH. My failure rate is around 50% now - mainly weather but also random technical problems.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

pakarinen
The 50% failure rate might be about right, sometimes better sometimes worse. Right now the Canary Islands are having a run of bad weather (that usually happens in march) What level are you?
I am an Astronomer Level so I get 5 missions at a time as found that 2-3 missions each time are good, depending on the scope. with the 14" SCT's you need at least two missions in a row as the 1st one usually has elongated stars.
You might want to either contact SLOOH support or post on their forum on Slooh to get help from power users, but here goes my two cents worth.

First let me say I subscribed to Telescope Live as a $4 a month, 6 credits a month every month I can download someones observations, did M101 this month. Yes the results are great but at an affordable level I am just downloading files to process, no control. To actually control a scope it is $20 to $60 an hour.

Slooh at my level is $300 a year and I can go crazy with it, you could potentially get 20 missions a night if the timing were right but in reality I find 5 a night or right now with the Canary down 5 every other night.

NOTE: a friend of mine who is a Professor at Brown University, teaching astronomy, books time on professional scopes in Chile and he is LUCKY to get 5 imaging nights a year and then until recently had to fly down there to get the data (an operator controls the scopes). So Slooh or TL is not bad.

If you are an apprentice with 1 mission at a time then it can be very frustrating, you schedule and weather or problems and get nothing. My personal feeling is to try the upper level and see if while your hit rate % may still be the same you get more data.

It depends on what you are looking for,mainly or only nice images or the feeling of controlling the scopes and getting the images. With TL and I may be wrong you control the target, filters and exposure but not the time and date and for a lot more money.

Slooh is not perfect but for me it beats driving to Rhode Island to the observatory, about an hour away each way and setting up on the 12 or 16 SCT and hoping to get something after being up all night. Or going into my Bortle 7.5 backyard and imaging between the trees, I can get most of Orion in the opening, the brightest stars totally in the opening for about 30 minutes..

I am getting a lot of data and just need to start processing, although my wife is on me about spending so much time on the computer