Hello … welcome to the Sunnyvale Open Source Observatory. This site is to report on, discuss and document, the effort to create a small open source, software controlled, internet accessible astronomical observatory that can take pictures of the night sky and send them to you.
The project will likely have two parts, an AllSkyCamera, and a AstroPhotoCamera.
The AllSkyCamera will be used to record current sky conditions in sunny Sunnyvale (hence the name), California, USA. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, the light pollution is … suboptimal, shall we say. But … it’s not impossible. One can see stars, planets, the Moon and occasional meteors, and the intent of this camera is to record those occurrences for use. Also, the ASC will let me (and you) know what the sky conditions are at any given moment, because we DO occasionally get rain and clouds.
The AstroPhotoCamera will start out as a Raspberry Pi HQ camera and lens to record astronomical objects as best we can from here. Inspire of the lights, I expect we WILL be able to get reasonable images and be able to post them online for everyone. Over time, I’ll be experimenting with higher resolution cameras, and lenses, to try to improve the quality of images as a demonstration of what can actually be done, even in the middle of a large metropolitan area.
