[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hans' thread got me thinking about something that has been dwelling at the back of the brain for a while. There are some very nice large amateur setups out there all working in isolation. If those with good systems got together and coordinated some imaging time so that a large number of scopes was looking at the same bit of sky, they could combine the data to have a serious imaging capability. Modern cameras have low dark and read noise levels, the sky will limit the resolution of any scope in Australia without adaptive optics to maybe 2 arc secs, modern tracking mounts are capable of sub arc second tracking and we should be able to manage scattered light. So, with only a handful of say 12 inch scopes, it should be possible to pretty much match the photon gathering capability of a 1m. A few more and we could be looking at 2m, which could be a serious second tier imaging capability.

Now clearly, adding scopes together is not going to be a simple scaling exercise, and it will involve significant organisation - but it should be do-able. Can anyone suggest fundamental technical issues that would bring it undone? I would be happy to significantly upgrade my imaging system to participate in such a scheme if it seemed likely to work.

And does anyone have any ideas on what real science could be done with such a capability?

regards Ray