Disclaimer: Telescope Live haven’t paid me to make this review and have told me to be completely honest. What they did do is give me a 1 month free trial and 50 credits so I could get used to the interface and have a play with lots of data. I am not affiliated with Telescope Live in any way.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into it:
What is Telescope Live?
Telescope Live was founded in 2016 by Marco Rocchetto. It’s a subscription based platform, giving astrophotographers and scientists an opportunity to control or use data from remote telescopes in Chile, Spain and Australia, ranging from small wide field refractors up to 1 metre wide reflector telescopes.
The aim of Telescope Live is to make astrophotography accessible to all. It does this by having tier based subscriptions available as bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond. With the bronze membership costing only £4 per month, it’s certainly an attractive option to many astrophotographers who aren’t fortunate enough to live in areas with over 250 clear nights each year – in fact, as I write this, I haven’t had a clear sky for over a month!
How Telescope Live Works
Telescope Live is broken down into 2 main functions, One Click Observations and Advanced Requests.
One Click Observations
One Click Observations are datasets obtained every single day from the Telescope Live network of telescopes, covering a huge amount of deep sky objects in the northern and southern hemispheres. Currently there are over 120,000 images. All the one click observations are pre-calibrated with calibration frames and there is a post-processed JPEG available to compare your result.
This means you’re able to download the image files and stack them using software such as DeepSkyStacker without having to worry about calibration frames. For more infomation on how to use DeepSkyStacker, check out my tutorial here.
Advanced Requests
Advanced Requests give you the ability to control every aspect of your observation. The cost of these sessions depends on the telescope you use and is charged by the hour. You can control everything from the deep sky object, to the filters, exposure length, basically every aspect of a night of deep sky astrophotography as you would in your backyard but with a £250k observatory – I think that’s pretty cool!
What’s more, is that Telescope Live provide quality assurance for their images, meaning that somebody actually reviews every single image that comes off the telescope and either reacquires them automatically, or gives you a refund so you’re never going to receive poor quality images.
Note: Currently, you require a minimum of a silver membership to submit advanced requests.
Subscription Levels
Subscriptions come in 5 levels, bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond.
Bronze
- Costs £4 per month
- 5 credits per month to grab one click observations
- Buy additional credits at £1.40 per credit
- Grab one click observations using credits
- Upvote 2 future one click observations at a time
- Access to the standard video tutorials
Silver
- Costs £19 per month
- 20 credits per month
- Upvote 5 future one clicks at a time
- Grab one click observations using credits
- Access to premium video tutorials
- Browse your images through a Personal Image Archive
- Take control of telescopes through Advanced Requests
Gold
- Costs £49 per month
- 50 credits per month
- 15 upvotes for future one click observations at a time
- Grab one click observations using credits
- Suggest future observations
- Access to premium video tutorials
- Browse your images through a Personal Image Archive
- 20% discount on all advanced requests
Platinum
- Costs £99 per month
- 100 complementary credits per month
- Buy additional credits at £ 1 .40 per credit
- Grab One-Click Observations using credits
- Upvote and auto-grab up to 30 future One-Click Observations at a time
- Submit Advanced Requests using credits
- Prioritised Advanced Requests
- Access to Premium Tutorials
- Suggest future observations
- Browse your images through a Personal Image Archive
- 25% discount on Advanced Requests and legacy One-Click Observations
Diamond
- 250 complementary credits per month
- Buy additional credits at £ 1 .40 per credit
- Grab One-Click Observations using credits
- Upvote and auto-grab unlimited future One-Click Observations at a time
- Submit Advanced Requests using credits
- Access to Premium Tutorials
- Suggest future observations
- Browse your images through a Personal Image Archive
- 30% discount on Advanced Requests and legacy One-Click Observations
What Telescope live ISN’T
It is NOT trying to replace amateur astrophotographers like you and me from buying our own gear and getting out into our gardens or dark sky sites and capturing our own data, quite the opposite in fact.
It actually compliments amateur astrophotographers. If you’re not blessed with many clear skies like many of us in the UK, then Telescope Live is an excellent way to be able to continue doing astrophotography.
Or you may fancy processing data from deep sky objects that you can’t image from your location i.e. if you live in the northern hemisphere, then why not try grabbing some data from a southern hemisphere targets and try processing that?
My thoughts
Am I telling you all to ditch your gear and get a Telescope Live subscription? No. What I am saying, is that from my perspective, the opportunity to use data from remote observatories to create amazing deep sky images is a great way to keep interested in astrophotography when I’m under clouded skies, which feels like it’s 95% of the time!
I also really love opportunity to process data from deep sky objects in the Southern Hemisphere…because when else will I get chance?!
I don’t have a mono camera, so the opportunity to process LRGB and SHO images was new to me but that made it all the more exciting. Seeing the quality of the images that a mono camera produces under some of the darkest skies on the planet is something that I just can’t do on my own.
Does it feel like cheating? I think if you’re trying to pass these images off as your own, then yes. Telescope Live owns the data, so when sharing the images you need to credit them. I know a lot of the fun in astrophotography is getting out there and capturing data, but I really enjoy the processing side so it’s a way to keep me interested.