Rent-A-Scope Slashes the Cost of Remote Observing to Within the Reach of most Amateur Astronomers
Adoption of a unique pricing plan augments large block volume pricing plans with the ability to also purchase small quantities of observing time.
Fountain Valley, Ca. (PRWEB) December 19, 2005 -- Rent-a-scope, a major provider of astronomical observing resources for members of the RAS Observatory of New Mexico and the general public, announced today a unique addition to the new, currently available points pricing plan.
The points plan provides access to the 5 sophisticated Takahashi telescopes mounted on remotely operated state-of-the-art robotic Paramounts telescope mounts. These high performance devices are produced by Software Bisque of Colorado, http://www.bisque.com/ and equipped with sensitive electronic detectors by SBIG (Santa Barbara Instrument Group) http://www.sbig.com/ and FLI (Finger Lakes Instruments) http://www.fli-cam.com/.
Arnie Rosner, Owner and operator of Rent-a-scope, which is based at the RAS Observatory http://www.ras-observatory.org/, located at 7300 feet in the Southern Sacramento Mountains, in New Mexico, stated, “The new points plan was actually suggested by one of our users. We have been developing this concept for close to a year.”
Rent-a-scope is hosted by New Mexico Skies, http://216.167.158.207/index.html.
Mr. Rosner commented, “Our billing system is designed to track activity by the minute. If you couple that with the fact that our camera systems are so efficient we find many researchers are able to capture their science data within minutes. This ability allows some to accomplish their research objectives on a very small budget. This is factor that has permitted us to offer points attractively bundled in small quantities. The minimum package is for 25 points at a cost of $50.00 USD.”
Here are links a few examples of the incredible data gathering abilities of some of our systems:
http://www.martin-nicholson.info/ras/30secondsa.htm
http://www.martin-nicholson.info/ras/60seconds.htm
Rosner went on to add, “The concept is really quite simple. For an example, at the current time one point is equal to one minute. A typical telescope system is being billed-out at 60 points per hour. The beauty of this program is that under certain circumstances we can adjust the number of points charged per hour to suit the conditions. For instance we will reduce the number of points billed per hour at a time of full Moon.”
Rosner continued, “If this all works out as we suspect, then researchers capable of performing certain types of activities not affected by the bright Moon will be afforded the opportunity to stretch their research funding. At the same time we gain as well since this would keep our systems in operation during a period which is usually non-productive.”
Here are a few more highlights about current new developments at the RAS Observatory:
| | - Recently several systems at the observatory were outfitted with additional photometric, narrowband filters and improved guiding capabilities.
- Also of major newsworthy attention is the soon to be added system designated as AREO6. AREO6 is currently under final testing and should be on line within the next 30 days. This system is located in the southern hemisphere near Queensland, Australia.
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