ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY FROM YOUR ARMCHAIR

Michael Moltenbrey explains how you can image the skies on the other side of the world without ever leaving the comfort of your home

Six of the best remote telescope services that give you access to great skies from your home.

Astrophotographers often dream of taking that impossible image, the one that is too faint for the light-polluted sky they live under or beyond the capability of the telescope they can afford. Many astronomers in the northern hemisphere dream of capturing the majesty of the Magellanic Clouds and other southern sky stalwarts, yet are unable to make the arduous and expensive trip to somewhere that they might be able to image them.

There is a solution to these woes, and that’s remote astronomy. There are several observatories around the world that let you control their scopes from the comfort of your own computer at home for a reasonable fee, and sometimes even for free. Here we look at five such telescopes to see what each has to offer.