News

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 […]

York University is now home to a new one-metre custom telescope that will enhance hands-on learning experiences and undergraduate research opportunities for the York community and beyond. Installed at the Allan I. Carswell Observatory on Aug. 16, the telescope is expected to be the largest situated on a university campus in Canada. A crane worked to hoist […]

Sitting 13 miles west of Boston under suburban skies (and a mere 32m above sea level!) is Wellesley College, the world’s preeminent college for women. Since 1870, Wellesley has given women the education and skills to make a difference in the world. With a student body of about 2,400, Wellesley can provide specialized instruction and plenty […]

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 […]

The Nissan Motor Company, builders of the new Navara Dark Sky concept truck, has chosen Planewave as the telescope to be used in the groundbreaking Gaia program, in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA). The vehicle, a pick-up-and-trailer combination, carries the Planewave telescope to remote areas far from the light pollution of major cities, […]

In the summer of 2018, PlaneWave installed their CDK700 at the Hanle observatory site near Leh, India.  This remote village houses the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO). At almost 15,000 ft (4,500 meters) above sea level, the IAO is one of the world’s highest, and affords some of the clearest views of the skies. Here the […]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen—it’s that time of year again. It’s “rollout” time! PlaneWave’s newest offering—the L-350 Mount—is finally here. Production ran a little longer than expected, but then again it’s a high technology mount at a fairly appreciable price. We wanted to make sure they were “all systems go” before a single unit shipped Realistically, […]