The 12" LX-200 (installed with an Optec NextGEN Widefield 5.0X focal reducer (running the 12" @f/5.9) can take unguided exposures up to 4 minutes (south of -25° declination) but the software can provide auto guiding via the use of the secondary guide chip in the CCD camera. The telescope control software uses no "error mapping" software and with such a well polar aligned system, doesn't requires any - as objects land on the CCD sensor every time. By "right clicking" on the image preview in the client software, enables a user to center the desired object. Auto Astrometry is also available. Other enhancements were made to the telescope, like an addition of a 18VDC (newer Meade telescopes use 12V) trickle charged back-up battery system - that automatically switches on, if mains power is lost. This is so the telescope does not lose its position of the sky. We also installed a laser viewfinder and 2 web cameras, with a red LED that shows the declination setting circle, to assist with monitoring and syncing the telescope remotely.

This new test system then went online and took its "first light" image on the 18th of November, 2007. The SkyLive software points the telescope and operates the CCD cameras on the telescope computer side at Grove Creek, which then communicates via our two-way internet satellite service to the server in Italy. Users then logon to the server, via the use of the interactive free client software. All the software on both the telescope and server sides were written by SkyLive staff - no commercial astronomical software is required, therefore no commercial usage fees are required to be paid. You can even slew the telescope using free planetarium software installed on your PC.

Anyone can watch and download the live CCD images or long exposures as they come down (the live preview image area is updated every 3 seconds) - a yearly club membership fee, to help cover costs, is only charged by SkyLive for users that wish to actually control the telescope and take images themselves. You can even chat to other users, mark an arrow on the screen to a object of interest and discuss the images being taken and ask for support, as each telescope its own live chat box! Now that is cool :-)

The "Middle Observatory" at Grove Creek (Housing Telescope 6):
 
The roof opens from the middle, with a motor on the south/east side and another motor on the north/west side.
This building is located 15 meters south/west of the main domed observatory, measuring 7.08 meters x 4.65 meters.
"Telescope 6" is a vintage C14 on a Astro-Physics 1200GTO mount, installed in the centre of this building.


Automatic Roof Motors were installed by Brett Soames.

Jim Lynch, kindly paid for the completion and motorisation of the middle building at Grove Creek in December, 2007. In exchange for Grove Creek providing free access to our original vintage 1973 C14 (the 3rd ever made by Celestron, with outstanding optics), SkyLive was willing to donate a high quality mount. We decided to purchase a Astro-Physics 1200GTO German Equatorial mount and was very satisfied with the results, after a few Southern Hemisphere bugs were solved in the firmware... The new mount arrived on the 27th of December 2007 and initially, we tested the new mount with a Pentax 100 SDUF Astrograph for very wide field work. Ivan sent out his SBIG ST10-XME CCD camera and CFW-8a 5 position filter wheel to use on this instrument.

After testing was completed, Grove Creek's famous C14 - seen through by thousands of people over 22 years, the 3rd one built by Celestron and well known as having outstanding optics, was installed on the 20th May, 2008. The ST10-XME CCD camera was then swapped to the Meade 12" LX-200 for photometric studies and the SBIG ST8-XE CCD camera (which is a better pixel match) was installed on the C14 running at f/6.92, using a focal reducer and a SBIG CFW10a 10 position filter wheel.

The C14 and ST-8XE provide a field of view of 12.8 arc minutes high, by 19.2 arc minutes wide, with an image scale (aka pixel ratio) of 0.749^secs/pixel at BIN 1x1. We suggest you image at BIN 2x2, where the pixel ratio (image scale) is 1.51^sec/pixel - as 1.5^secs/pixel is the "magic number" of any given CCD and telescope focal length combination. Seeing conditions will normally not exceed this resolution and it "wastes" sensitivity, if the camera is used at full resolution. The results from the C14 and SBIG ST8-XE CCD camera have been staggering, especially since the new narrow-band filters where installed in August 2008 - which where very kindly donated by Marco Angelini. SBIG totally rebuilt the ST-8XE CCD camera in April 2009, after it blew up and we had to use a ST-10XME CCD camera on the C14 for a few months.

Astro-Physics guarantee 1200-GTO mounts to have a periodical error of 5 arc seconds or less, before PEC (Periodical Error Control) software training. However, the performance of the long focal length of 2,457mm of the C14 on this new mount came as somewhat a nice surprise, as the periodical error of the mount was an amazing 2.14 arc second WITHOUT PEC enabled!  This was further trained down to 1.18^sec, using Pempro. This enables unguided exposures if your exposure is less than 4 minutes. For longer exposures, the SkyLive client software enables very accurate auto guiding of this mount by just taking a short 60sec exposure and checking the guide box for the system to locate a guide star and then an exposure of up to 15 minutes can be taken with perfect guiding. Unfortunately, as is normal to some extent with German Equatorial Mounts and large Schmidt Cassegrain Telescopes, we do have a small orthogonal error. This is despite locking the primary mirror and as a result, the pointing can be out as much as 10^mins - however, Ivan Bellia has recently installed automatic pin-point astrometric centring, so objects are always near centre of the chip and automatic software focus checking for every object. Even so, the SkyLive software easily allows you to centre and frame any object you desire. The mount is polar aligned within 1^min of the South Celestial Pole. T-Point has shown us that all errors are "repeatable" so we are working on improving all the minor pointing errors.