Australian National University awards PlaneWave Instruments a contract to build an optical ground station with their RC700

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 […]

posted June 12, 2020

CubeSat Astronomy in the 2020s

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 […]

posted February 11, 2020

Installation of new telescope expected to be largest at a Canadian university

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 […]

posted November 20, 2019

Wellesley College

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 […]

posted July 9, 2019

History of Robotic and Remotely Operated Telescopes The Fairborn Observatory 1979-1989

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 […]

posted March 21, 2019

A New Perspective on Orbital Debris

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 […]

posted November 30, 2018

The Student Space Telescope Network At the forefront of CubeSat technology

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 […]

posted November 30, 2018

Nissan Selects Planewave as Part of Joint ‘GAIA’ Promo with ESA

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, […]

posted November 29, 2018

CDK700 joins the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) program in India.

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 […]

posted September 21, 2018

Rollout of the L-350

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, […]

posted September 11, 2018