Slooh

Slooh.com
Web address slooh.com
Slogan Your Live Online Observatory
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Service provider
Registration Yes
Owner Michael Paolucci (Founder)
Launched June 26, 2003[1]
Alexa rank
 positive decrease 46,102 (April 2014)[2]
Current status Active

Slooh is a robotic telescope service that can be viewed live through a web browser with Flash plug-in. It was not the first robotic telescope, but it was the first that offered "live" viewing through a telescope via the web.[3] Other online telescopes traditionally email a picture to the recipient. The site has a patent on their live image processing method.[4] Slooh is an online astronomy platform with live-views and telescope rental for a fee.[5] Observations come from a global network of telescopes located in places including Spain and Chile.[5]

The name Slooh comes from the word "slew" to indicate the movement of a telescope, modified with "ooh" to express pleasure and surprise.

History

The service was founded in 2002 by Michael Paolucci. As of October 2009, Paolucci remains as Chairman.[6] The service went online December 25, 2003 but was not available to the public until 2004. On March 18, 2006, the service was upgraded to incorporate additional features. The new version, SLOOH 2.0, offered a "Member Channel", which allows members to broadcast their "solo missions" to other members. Another added feature was the desktop alert that lets members know about upcoming "special missions".

Participating observatories

The original astronomical observatory is located on the island Tenerife in the Canary Islands on the volcano called Teide. The site is at the 2,300-metre (7,500 ft) elevation[7] and situated away from city light pollution. This (Canary Islands) site includes 2 domes, each with 2 telescopes. Each dome has a high magnification telescope and a wide field telescope. One dome is optimized for planetary views (e.g., more magnification and a different CCD), and the other is optimized for deep sky objects (e.g., less magnification, more light sensitive CCD). Each dome offers 2 telescopic views: one high magnification (narrow field) view through a 14-inch (360 mm) Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope; and a wide view through either a telephoto lens or an APO refractor. On September 23, 2012, the Slooh.com Canary Islands Observatory was assigned observatory code G40 by the Minor Planet Center for the reporting of asteroids, comets and other solar system small-bodies.[8]

On February 14, 2009, Slooh launched a second observatory in the hills above La Dehesa, Chile. This site offers views from the Southern Hemisphere, but since it is situated on the north side of Santiago, most of the low southern sky suffers from light pollution. This observatory has been offline since 2011, and was planned to return to operational status in April 2014.

Also in February 2009, construction began on a third observatory located near Wandong in Victoria, Australia. The Wide-Field camera requires additional software programming in order to work on the Slooh system, and is also reportedly being fixed by technicians. The All-Sky camera has been calibrated, shipped, and is caught up in Australian customs with reported delays. Reservations will be activated for the telescope by users once the wide-field camera is operational.[9] As of June 27, 2010,the web site was reported as inactive waiting to be re-established. By mid afternoon the system was up and fully operational. In 2011, the observatory was closed and the equipment relocated to the Teide site for a short time. Its status now is unclear. It was used to create a planetary system in 2012 which was briefly touted but never became a reality.

Unlike Google Sky which features images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Slooh can take new images of the sky with its telescopes.[5] It is more similar to the U.S. corporation LightBuckets, which also rents time on telescopes through a website on the Internet.[5] SLOOH was integrated with Google Sky showing user images taken with SLOOH, but that interface has not worked since November 2011.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "slooh.com - Traffic Details from Alexa". Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Slooh.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  3. ↑ New York NY (SPX). "Discovery.com Promotes Slooh Online Telescope To Readers". Retrieved June 2011.
  4. ↑ US patent 7194146
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Cassie Rodenberg, "The Best in Armchair Astronomy", Popular Mechanics (March 22, 2010) - Accessed October 2010
  6. ↑ "SLOOH - About Us". Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  7. ↑ "SLOOH - System Specifications". Retrieved September 26, 2012.
  8. ↑ "List Of Observatory Codes". The Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 2012-09-26.
  9. ↑ "SLOOH - Observatory Status". Retrieved 2009-12-28.

External links