For astrophotography, you can purchase access to the telescope's data through our online store. You can also access free data purchased for the public by SkyNews. Some data is available for free through RASC as well.

For outreach in classrooms, please visit our site dedicated to our outreach program.

The science program is still in development. Stay tuned to these pages and to RASC's newsletters to learn more about science courses we offer using data from our telescope.

Our telescope costs approximately USD2700 per month. This includes rent, insurance, maintenance, staff time for project management and any repairs that take longer than our included two hours of technician time a month. This cost also helps us pay off the initial cost of the telescope over time.

Our scope is relatively small in the world of amateur telescopes. Nearly every other telescope in our scope's shed is 24" in diameter, compared to ours at 16". Long-term, we have two goals: to purchase a larger telescope for astrophotography and science; and to move our existing telescope to an observatory at which astronomy can be done during school hours here in Canada so that students may more easily attend live sessions with the telescope.

You can visit this donation web page and make a donation today.

Sponsors should contact our office and speak with our Executive Director, Phil Groff.

The best experience may be to join one of our local Centres near you.  They can give you a hands-on experience with a telescope at one of their observing sites that you'll never forget.

The reality of a robotic telescope is that you can't just have a look through the eyepiece.  It really isn't designed for live views of the sky by people at the telescope, it's more for getting sequences of images for science and discovery or for making beautiful pictures in an unattended fashion.

The Sierra Remote Observatories buildings have over 30 operating telescopes that may be running at any time, and it is not safe for people to be in the observatory during nightly operations.

For extraordinary donations, we may be able to offer you an exciting alternative experience.

The RASC telescope is actually both - a robotic, remote telescope.

"Remote" means it is at a location far from urban lights, under dark skies.  A key aspect of our plan is to use a facility that has on-site staff, who can help in case of difficulties or if we wish to make changes to the equipment.  This is much better than having to drive or fly for hours to get to a difficult, somewhat inaccessible site to fix something in the middle of the night.

"Robotic" means that the telescope is under computer control, with a scheduler that automatically picks the next task for the telescope to perform.  The idea is to minimize human intervention, and to submit "jobs" for the telescope to perform, such as specifying where in the sky to point, and what filters to use for the image, and how long an image to take.  This way, the scheduler can optimize the use of the telescope, and will deal with weather and sequence observations based on where in the sky the telescope is pointed.