PlaneWave to Host Campus Open House and Science Expo

PlaneWave Instruments, global leader in the design and manufacture of high-tech observatory-class telescopes, is excited to announce its first Science Expo. Coupled with a campus open house, the event will take place on October 1-2, 2022, from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, at PlaneWave’s headquarters in Adrian, MI. The Expo will feature a variety of […]

posted September 13, 2022

PlaneWave Installs CDK700 for Georgia State University

Georgia State University’s Hard Labor Creek Observatory has upgraded from a 20-inch telescope to a PlaneWave CDK700 that will provide students, professional astronomers, and the public with a world-class observatory system. In March 2022, the PlaneWave installation team set off to bring the CDK700’s revolutionary optical design and innovative direct-drive mount technology to enhance the […]

posted June 13, 2022

PlaneWave Installs First High School Observatory in Hawaii

Aloha Astrophotography On the shores of Waipahu, Hawaii, a PlaneWave CDK400 observatory system now rests atop a high school building overlooking Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. As the first telescope installed at a high school in Hawaii, the PlaneWave team was honored to be a part of the school’s historic installation which will […]

posted April 20, 2022

Miratlas and PlaneWave Instruments announce partnership to streamline robotic telescope operation

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 […]

posted June 23, 2020

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

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