@smubgobs
September 9, 2016 10:38 PM   Subscribe

The Burke-Gaffney Observatory at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia will take your astronomical observation requests via Twitter.

When the observatory's main telescope, primarily used for undergraduate education and outreach, was upgraded in 2014 after 40 years, the observatory also took the opportunity to make the system remotely controllable, adding a Twitter interface with future plans for more social media connections. It's open to the public, pending your approval by the observatory; if you're interested, here's the overview and how to become an authorized user, along with a FAQ and more technical details.

The archive of observations can be found here.
posted by Upton O'Good (5 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
In other Nova Scotia observatory news, Tim Doucette, (legally blind) amateur astronomer, has opened up his observatory to the public.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:53 PM on September 9, 2016


Oh god, this will end badly. Can we just change the name of that stupid planet already?
posted by sexyrobot at 5:52 AM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Neat stuff. In a completely unrelated story involving Canadian universities and observatories, someone at The University of Western Ontario covered the observatory with an R2-D2 costume as a prank.
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 7:13 AM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh god, this will end badly. Can we just change the name of that stupid planet already?

Do you really want to have to explain to your kids how "Planet McPlanetface" got its name?
posted by jackbishop at 7:39 AM on September 10, 2016


I used to live a couple blocks away. It's a fifteen-minute walk to downtown Halifax. You'd really be hard-pressed to find a worse place for an observatory. Unless your request is "well-lit cloud cover," you will very likely be out of luck.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:00 PM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


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