[Baron von Richthofen (Vaclav)]

Originally Posted by rally

The maths doesnt add up.

Lets say you spend more than any average australian amateur is ever likely to be able to afford on such a venture - lets say $100,000 - to get your shareholding up as high as possible.

That means you would be a 1/50th shareholder - entitled to 1/50th of the good nights or time slots thereof.
If there were 300 good nights (big if) that means you get 6 of them for your $100k.
But of course an observatory of this size needs full time staff and has substantial overheads and maintenance costs plus the gear would need to be replaced after 10 years anyway.

So an $100k initial investment will also necessitate an annual contribution of maybe per ($100k) shareholder (at least) not including replacement and upgrade costs.

Thats pretty expensive amateur astronomy ! - over 10 years its likely to cost someone at least $600k (at least) for 6 nights a year over 10 years.

You could buy an awful lot of appreciating real estate assets complete with a private observatory and high quality gear for that and get to use it all quite selfishly for maybe 100 nights of the year.

Why would any government provide a grant for a bunch of wealthy amateurs who are in the business of wasting large sums of their own money.

So its a silly question - that's my thought.

PS - Of course you could put in $10,000 and be entitled to an hour a year - you'd sure want to hope it wasnt cloudy on your allocated time slot !

The federal government would give about $2mil towards the project and $150k per year for up keep so it would work out a bit better and it would be able to do solar observing as well as night