Remote Telescope System for Science Education and Small-scale Researches at Bosscha Observatory, Indonesia and at Gunma Astronomical Observatory, Japan

This talk presents the concept of The Gunma Astronomical Observatory-Instititute of Technology Bandung Remote Telescope System (hereafter the GAO-ITB RTS) that has been commisioned in March, 2004. GAO-ITB RTS consists of two 21 cm Schmidt-Cassegrain (f/D=10.0) telescopes, equatorially mounted and supported by Takahashi EM-200 (drive) + GO TO System Temma 2 (control system) connected to a PC through RS 232 C cable. The ITB-side telescope will be situated inside a lightweight sliding roof on the roof of the visitor center at Bosscha Observatory in Lembang. The main software is the Telescope Tracer 98 working under Windows XP that enables chart-based pointing for epoch 2000 or at the observing time, hand-set emulator, and equipped with a database containing SAO, variable star, double star (V ≤ 9.5 mag); Deep sky objects: Messier (110), NGC (7840), IC (5382); and Solar system. Furthermore, with the support of the software TelAgent, web-based remote control can be conducted under Internet Explorer (Ver 5.5 or later). Assigning a static IP address for the mounting system is indispensable. The remote system has been set up to fulfill three basic functions, i.e. command sending through TelAgent, image streaming using web server, and teleconferencing. To support the whole activity, a data communication rate greater than 64 Kbps is needed. The system is currently furnished with TGV-M (811(H)´508(V) pixels, 8.4μm(H) ´9.8 μm(V) @ pixel) camera. Although primarily designed for public distant-learning, the potential of GAO-ITB RTS for high-time resolution photometric observation, such as occultation, and patrol-type observation have been identified and will be explored.