Any Telescope.live users?

[pakarinen]

Saw a review on YouTube of Telescope.live that was intriguing. Pricier than SLOOH but they have three observatories for imaging and the user interface looks more refined. Anybody here with experience with them?

[dcrowson]

I've used Telescope.live from near their start. I'm not really sure you can compare Slooh and them. They used to be fairly expensive but the plans now allow for grabbing 'one-click' observations which are typically an hour or more data on select targets. I tend to get several hours of data a day with the 'gold' plan. I would consider Slooh observations to be somewhat like what a beginner would get versus Telescope.live high-end. They will be moving to a new version (3?) in the next week or so with some different features. I tend to think they're the best bargain around for what you get.

If you sign up for a trial account, use my referral code: SUFM5 . This will give me some free credits while you're a customer and give you 20% off plans for up to a year.

Here's my album of images Ive made with Telescope.live - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/ ... 8964720892.

Dan

[Peppy]

1+ for Telescope live I used it last winter, and plan on using it again this winter.
Oh and thanks Dan for starting me on there.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I am going to give telescope.live a shot, I will do a lot more reading about it before I take the plunge, want to know more about it and how it does on images like C80 Omega Centauri or NGC2070 the Tarantuyal compared to what I can get from Slooh. I have been using SLOOH for about 2 years and enjoy it. The big thing I notice is that Slooh seems more hands on especially when setting up RA/DEC missions (imaging runs) I do that a lot for the Astronomical League Galaxy Group programs.
Something I saw when I tried Insight remote scopes was that you get very good subs, no oblong stars or satellites. With Slooh it is like using a scope in your backyard, you have subs that show the effects of wind or clouds or satellites etc. You need to manually schedule your missions watching the moon, the weather and timing them to be near the meridian and as high as possible. then You have to cull out the poor images. To me it is more work before you post processing than Insight or RoboScopes and I would assume telescopes.live.
Another thing I have noticed is that Dan's images are several hours of subs, most images from Slooh are anywhere from 10 minutes to 50 minutes, not many people take several hours of subs, It can be done but it is a lot of work with Slooh since you have to schedule only 5 minutes (10 minutes on Canary 1 the 20") so it certainly isn't "One Click" imaging

But at least at this time I enjoy the challenge of getting good results from Slooh,

One final thing that is interesting with Slooh is that you can watch the live feed of the missions the telescopes are imaging in real time, you can see the image develop and if it is something you like or want to add to the subs you are working on you can do what they call a Robosnap, capture the mission and get the FITS files for it. I have seen NGC's I had never seen and probably wouldn't have tried to image, or watch as people are looking and finding comets or asteroids, just now I am watching 19P:Borrelly a comet I never heard of.
True Slooh isn't a Rolls Royce or even a Cadillac but it is a good sold Lexus and you can get good results with it but you have to hone your skills to get them.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Not sure my my image of IC405 came out so red on the post, it isn't that way on my flickr or on my PC, so I am deleting it from here, well that didn't work the THUMBNAIL looks ok but when it shows the full image is to blown out red

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Dan
What Catalogs can you request images from? NGC of course, but ABELL or the others?

[pakarinen]

Something I saw when I tried Insight remote scopes was that you get very good subs, no oblong stars or satellites. With Slooh it is like using a scope in your backyard, you have subs that show the effects of wind or clouds or satellites etc. You need to manually schedule your missions watching the moon, the weather and timing them to be near the meridian and as high as possible. then You have to cull out the poor images. To me it is more work before you post processing than Insight or RoboScopes and I would assume telescopes.live.

[...]

True Slooh isn't a Rolls Royce or even a Cadillac but it is a good sold Lexus and you can get good results with it but you have to hone your skills to get them.

SLOOH is not a bad service IMO, but I do get high percentage of bad shots - egg stars, off-center, etc. OTOH, I only bought the Apprentice level membership, so I'm not using it to its full potential.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Something I saw when I tried Insight remote scopes was that you get very good subs, no oblong stars or satellites. With Slooh it is like using a scope in your backyard, you have subs that show the effects of wind or clouds or satellites etc. You need to manually schedule your missions watching the moon, the weather and timing them to be near the meridian and as high as possible. then You have to cull out the poor images. To me it is more work before you post processing than Insight or RoboScopes and I would assume telescopes.live.

[...]

True Slooh isn't a Rolls Royce or even a Cadillac but it is a good sold Lexus and you can get good results with it but you have to hone your skills to get them.

SLOOH is not a bad service IMO, but I do get high percentage of bad shots - egg stars, off-center, etc. OTOH, I only bought the Apprentice level membership, so I'm not using it to its full potential.

I agree lately Slooh has been more like my backyard observatory especially when it comes to pointing errors, many of the objects are not dead center but often low in the image. I have the Astronomer level and try to do 5 missions at a time of the same object that way I can cull more images.

I am going to check out Telescope.live but their "one click" missions are only limited objects that have been imaged by others at least it looks that way and their advanced missions which I would need for some of my galaxy clusters get pricey.

You can't beat the price of slooh

[dcrowson]

Slooh is decent for what it is. I used it years ago and it can be really good for capturing images for say Astronomy League programs. I would still consider the images you get oriented towards beginners. Their equipment is in need of some TLC but covid has prevented it on top of everything else. You can't really compare the relatively low end equipment and short exposure times to what you get with 'expensive' equipment used by Telescope.Live. I think the services are really geared towards different people.

The new version allows for grabbing hours of data on what I would call common (coming from someone that has taken thousands of images) objects. They're leveraging their database of all of the data collected and you can access it. The new Telescope.Live 3 changed the way some things work but if grabbing the one-click type sets, you can get a lot of data a month for a dollar or two a day. Again, it is hard to compare with Slooh because they're not really getting the same things.

The one-click objects are more common targets that are selected by Telescope.Live and higher-plan users. They used to have 'pro-sets' that were advanced requests users agreed to allow others to download. Those are still available but in bundles like all the others.

As far as catalogs, I think it uses simbad or vizier so you can type in pretty much anything and it will let you know which locations and scopes will work. You can also type in coordinates. The only restriction is the object being around 30 degrees or higher in the sky.

I have no affiliation with Telescope.Live. I have/had an interest in trying to have a remote setup in Chile to catch targets from home or my 'cheap' remote setup. The cost of getting something to Chile is insanely expensive - think how much it costs to ship a box to your neighbor these days and then add a lot more, 20-25% duties, etc. It is pretty much beyond me unless I can find a partner. Telescope.Live data is typical of what I would be happy with collecting myself. I started using it by finding other users and pooling data to cut costs. I'm still interested in doing that if someone here is a Silver or Gold member because I can't just grab every one-click with the new setup.

I could probably provide a data set if anyone has an interest.

Dan

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

First I agree with you, Slooh is oriented towards beginners, and that describes me. I am mainly a Solarhead, love solar!!! If you don't get Andromeda this year it will be the same next year, with solar if you miss the prom this minute it will be different or gone in 10 minutes! Solar changes literally minute by minute.
I am investigating Insight and Telescope.Live as they are a step up but wonder how much it is going to cost as I am on social security and no pension (what is that?) so I try to be a bit careful.
I would place Slooh between a my home scope, egg stars no guiding etc, and Telescope.Live although Slooh is closer to the home setup, in fact about 1 step up and on par with setup at the Seagrave Observatory where I am a Trustee with out 12" and 16" Meade LX200's. Telescope.Live and others from what have seen are a couple steps up.

Thanks for your response about Telescope.Live I will be trying it out of course that leads to a few more questions.

I found that Simbad has Messier and Abell and IC and UGC checking for others. I found a site that does SIMBAD queries, HICKSON is missing but it is with Slooh also and have to do coordinates.

Seems that the Bronze and One Clicks would be good for pretty pictures, for less well known things For my Astronomical League programs I would probably still use Slooh

I will post what I think when I try it

[pakarinen]

DS Survey gives Hickson coords (and FITS):

https://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_f ... IMBAD[url][/url]

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I have the AL guide book that lists all the coordinates on Hickson, that is what I use for Slooh, the coordinates.

As I mentioned I see Slooh as a step up from the best I can do at home, while the other remote observatories are a step up from Slooh. Part of what I like about Slooh is having to work for your image. So far I see the others as less work for the capture, about the same for processing although starting with better data you get better and easier results

[dcrowson]

Seems that the Bronze and One Clicks would be good for pretty pictures, for less well known things For my Astronomical League programs I would probably still use Slooh

Slooh is great for AL programs. I know several people using it for this alone. As a collector of AL program awards (the ones that allow imaging), I tend to use what I would call non-pretty pictures for the programs and Slooh even goes beyond this. I have several programs I've completed here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcrowson/albums. At some point, I might need to use Slooh to capture southern hemisphere objects but names of the programs (if any) escape me right now.

Your Slooh M83 is fantastic. I did not know that they had excellent equipment that that. Even with short exposures, a large telescope can capture a lot of data pretty quick. That is definitely not a beginner system or result. The one caveat would be that M83 is big and bright so results can vary.

Shameless plug - if you make pretty pictures, look into the Foundations of Imaging Program. I'm the coordinator.

Dan

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I will check out the Foundations Program! I have completed several AL programs, the ones that allow Remote Scopes including the Globular Clusters, Planetary Nebulas, Open Clusters. I also earned the 2nd level of the Outreach award and am close to the Master Outreach as well as the 44th person to earn the Hydrogen Alpha Solar Award. Check out my site for AL at https://solarhead.shutterfly.com/astrol ... arclusters if you click on the more tab you can see the other programs and the main focus of the webpage is my solar imaging.
The M83 had about 40 minutes of subs I am trying to do about 120 minutes for M78 with Slooh, I used Pixinsight and then Lightroom and Photoshop and AI Denoise to work the image.

As I mentioned I like the challenge of getting good subs with Slooh, it is hit or miss and often more miss, you have to think when scheduling, looking at the moon, altitude of the object, trying to get it close to transit, sky conditions clouds and more, all that I would have to do here. Also when downloading and in post you have to really cull quite a bit. But I enjoy all that.

[dcrowson]

Looking at your site, you would have at least half the foundations program with all the DSOs...

I'm actually looking to start the Ha program. I have our clubs Lunt (it is an older model - I think it is a LS50). I'm a bit of a lazy astrophotographer so I want to put an ASCOM focuser on it so I can remotely control it from inside but it also has the pressure tuner that can't be.

Dan

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I started with an LS50 with double stack, I didn't like the helical focuser so I replaced it with the Feathertouch focuser. The only downside to the LS50 for imaging is that you have to remove the nose piece off the camera, if you are using ZWO ASI cameras and the 1 1/4 EP holder and then screw the camera right to the diagonal to get focus. I find it good for full disk shots and with a 2x or 3x for large area views of the proms, I found closeups of the AR's tough with it.
Did you see the LS50 tab under the "MORE" tab on the website?

Pressure tuned scopes require more care than the Quark but you can do the Ha with the LS50

[dcrowson]

Any Gold or Silver users? I'm wondering if anyone is grabbing the individual one clicks.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I am on the free week right now and have been grabbing some one clicks and a couple bundles

[Astrovetteman]

Hi Guys!!
I was just reading your posts on Telescope Live. Like Dan, I've been a Gold subscriber for over a year and I think I've downloaded darn near every One-Click Observation since then. I'm REALLY impressed with the service's they offer. Sure, sometimes the data doesn't come out perfect, but for the most part, it's wonderful. Just an example, I looked back at some of the old Pro Data Sets and found the Cone Nebula/Christmas Tree Cluster. I processed it yesterday for the holidays.....it was only about 15 subs total LRGB taken with their CHI-4 ASA 500N and here's the result. I think that for $50/month it WELL WORTH IT!
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