Articles and White Papers

To learn more about our direct drive mounts for you application please call us at (310)-639-1662 and speak with one of our professional team members today. Why should you use PlaneWave L-series? Whether your goal is astrophotography, research, or satellite tracking, PlaneWave’s L-series mounts come standard with direct drive motors for superior tracking precision and […]

Are you ready to capture APOD quality astro-photographs? We welcome you to join the family of PlaneWave equipment owners, where the focus is on you. PlaneWave offers installation and training services for all of our products, commissioning our systems within 1-2 days onsite, including the 1M-class PW1000. Our experienced technicians are also available to assist […]

The L-series lineup was born out of the dream to create the most versatile and cost-effective direct drive mount. Whether your goal is capturing beautiful astrophotographs that are out of this world, tracking fast moving satellites, or tracking objects that are not in orbit, the L-series will help you reach those goals all while being […]

PlaneWave’s Vertical Integration Helps Ensure Customers Receive Highest Quality Equipment at Affordable Prices PlaneWave Instruments is focused on vertical integration. We have been from the beginning. Our increased capacity, reduced overhead, and manufacturing innovations allow us to create high quality equipment at affordable prices. Design, optical production, fabrication, assembly, and quality control are all performed […]

GREOUX LES BAINS, FRANCE, JUNE 23RD, 2020 – Miratlas SAS and PlaneWave Instruments Inc. announce today their commercial collaboration joining efforts to facilitate site survey, robotic telescope systems, and optical ground station operations. PlaneWave Instruments expertise in both optical and mechanical design since 2006 allowed them to develop over the years a complete range of […]

ADRIAN, MI, JUNE 9TH, 2020 — PlaneWave Instruments will supply, deliver, install, provide support, and maintain a 700mm Ritchey-Chrétien Optical Ground Station (OGS) telescope at The Australian National University (ANU) . The OGS telescope shall be capable of tracking satellites in LEO, GEO and Deep Space with low tracking error for the purpose of Free-Space […]

Room 301B, Hawaii Convention Center Workshop during the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society Honolulu, Hawaii, Saturday, January 4, 2020, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm Room 301B, Hawaii Convention Center Organizers Russell Genet, California Polytechnic State University, 805.438.3305, rgenet@calpoly.edu Mary Knapp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 617.715.5563, mkanpp@mit.edu Workshop Synopsis Thanks to NASA’s support, an increasing number of CubeSat […]

By Russell M. Genet Abstract Automated instrument sequencers were employed on solar eclipse expeditions in the late 1800s. However, it was not until the 1960s that Art Code and associates at Wisconsin used a PDP-8 minicomputer with 4 K of RAM to automate an 8-inch photometric telescope. It took reliable microcomputers to initiate the modern […]

The US DoD is testing a new S-band radar space fence at Kwajalein. It should find and track most new objects during their first pass, rather than needing days to months using hit-or-miss “pencil-beam” radars. This fence may find many objects down to 2-5 cm that were not found before. This may catalog ~20X more […]

Officially launching last June, the Student Space Telescope Network (or SSTN) is the brainchild of Ralph Emerson, PlaneWave Instruments’ Vice President of Sales & Marketing; Russell Genet, research scholar and resident at California Polytechnic State University; and PlaneWave Instruments advisor and co-founder of the fiber optic communication company Sierra Monolithics, David Rowe. Basically, PlaneWave partnered […]