Thanks Rob for your message.
Just to make things clear, the Virtual Telescope is NOT a commercial organization: we run almost 50 online events per year, all of them with free access, as our goal is share the sky with everyone around the globe, especially those unable to easily access (for many reasons) typical, remote observatories. Since Sept. 2012, more than two millions of individuals from 200 Countries looked at the stars via the Virtual Telescope, for free.
Only this April, celebrating the 5th edition of Global Astronomy Month, we hosted 6 events, some of them were very big efforts. I wish to mention these podcast recordings:
- Online Messier Marathon - 6th edition:
http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014/...-2014-podcast/
- Near-Earth asteroid 2014 GN1 close encounter:
http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014/...-2014-podcast/
- 15 April total lunar eclipse:
http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2014/...uvenir-poster/
In some cases, we are asked by institutions, like JPL/Nasa, to provide this live coverage for some special events, all this - again - for free.
All this is based on a volunteer effort, with no funding by any institution; we survive and pay bills thanks to donations coming from those trusting our services and those willing to use our robotic telescopes for their own imaging/scientific needs. Putting together all this stuff was a crazy, expensive dream of the undersigned, but I'm still happy to have done this!
You are very welcome to discover how the VT works to bring all this to the world.
So, our public activities are 100% free, thanks to that handful of people freely supporting all the big effort from time to time.
That said, I wish to thank those interested in our call: we were asked by our followers to investigate this opportunity, so I managed to put the call here.
Wish you a great eclipse observing!
Yours
Gianluca