My astronomy hobby finally gained momentum in my retirement days when I found the US Slooh remote telescope community. Although personal contact will be less, professional technology, which can be booked in advance, ensures both a great result and a normal night's sleep.
Slooh currently has three observatories. In the Canary Islands, Tenerife, there are six telescopes. In Chile near the capital Santiago, there are four telescopes in the La Dehesa mountains and the newest one is situated in Siding Springs, Australia. The observatories are located in such a way that, weather permitting, the sky is being photographed somewhere at any time.
The sub-page guides below lead you to the different features of Slooh and shed more light on the technology, astronomy and our experiences.
Slooh telescopes are solid professional work and each is worth tens of thousands of euros. Slooh has patented its remote operation technology, which guarantees a ready-processed image immediately after the observation is completed.
Through Slooh, I learned about LRGB photography, filters, and the basics of image processing – at the same time, I gained confidence that the hobby is worthwhile.
Slooh encourages members to show their observation results
Every stargazer wants to observe Messier objects and they are eagerly collected.
Caldwell's target list is a little less well-known, as it requires access to both the northern and southern sky.
Slooh's activities emphasize learning through doing. So members challenge themselves by combining their observations with learning tasks.
In addition to knowledge of astronomy, the prize is a wonderful collection of posters worth showing off.
As the icing on the cake, we want to present all of Jari's more than 50 posters, which are presented through our virtual star gallery.
In the opening image, the best star images are displayed in an imaginary gallery and there is a virtual person admiring them.
From the homepage, you can access the actual exhibition animation, where the learning task posters appear.
As a teacher myself, I want to strongly emphasize Slooh's educational goals. And the main target group is schoolchildren. The site has separately discussed 1,000 significant celestial objects and the guides also discuss astronomy techniques. In addition, members receive membership points for their hobby and move up within the site. Members can participate in tasks where they gain deeper knowledge about objects in the starry sky and the solar system while being guided to photograph them. Members are also encouraged to upload their observations to the site, where they will be shared for others to see. This is an absolutely fantastic platform for schoolchildren to use and I hope as many as possible will realize this.