Remote monitoring and instrumentation for Mount Kent Observatory

Abstract

This thesis explores the development of web interface design for Mount Kent Observatory. It also investigates remote observing, and planetary photography using webcam. USQ maintained an observatory at Mount Kent, 30 km Southwest of Toowomba. The observatory is undergoing development process with purpose of providing remote and robotic observing for distance education students. With longitude difference, student in daytime classes in United States will have the opportunity of live observing the night sky above Australia. The purposes of the web interface design are to provide weather information for Mount Kent to assist remote observing, to implement live observing, and to include an image gallery. This project examines the software that provides web-ase access to remote robotic observing, and research planetary photography using webcam. Webcam is superior to CCD camera in nondeep sky imaging. With image stacking, planetary images captured by webcam can be processed further to generate rich image. The implementation of live webcam preview in web interface design can also be use in future live observing. Future work in implementing the weather station and cloud sensor output into the web interface design may need to be considered. The web interface design may need further development and maintenance.