29 January 2009

Open Access Astro-Observatory Runs GNU/Linux

Montegancedo Observatory is the first free open access astronomical observatory in the world. It is located in Building 6 of the School of Computing. The dome is equipped with a computer-automated, robotized 10” telescope, and several computers operating as a web applications server. The observatory also links and broadcasts images and videos captured by the webcams arranged around the dome... All servers run on GNU/Linux systems.

Providing open access to facilities, mediated by the Internet; providing (presumably) open access to the results in real-time; using free software to run the whole thing: this is the future of science. (Via Open Access News.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

certainly not the first robotic observatory, nor the first open observatory. Definitely not the first observatory to use Linux.

So perhaps this is the first to combine all three ? :)

Glyn Moody said...

sounds plausible....