Observing tools

Some of the tools we provide to assist observers during the night were linked to pages of other telescopes at the observatory. To avoid that any local Internet or computer problem would affect access local installations were made of the the most relevant tools.

There was a question if we should get a copy of the Digitised Sky Survey (DSS) from the ING which is used to make finding charts for optical observations and is a useful tool to have available at all time. This is kept on a CD jukebox and we are going to see if we easily can get a copy of all the data on hard disk, and if so, if the program that accesses the data can be easily adapted to getting the data from disk instead of from the CD jukebox. Else, we might look at getting a more up-to-date (but much larger) catalogue for local installation.

In a related effort, we are currently testing a new facility that presents an image of the sky for the current telescope pointing. This uses the WikiSky web site which provides a more sophisticated interface than the DSS images and would actually be a nice tool for visiting observers though it also depends more on the Internet connection. There is a certain degree of proprietary right involved as for having the telescope pointing being publicly available so this tool will only be accessible from within the NOT computer network.