Astrophotos.org is a cooperative dedicated to astro-photographers that want to acquire amazing images from dark sites, on equipment that would ordinarily be out of their price range. 

Using the remote observatories and high-end equipment of GLOBAL-RENT-A-SCOPE.COM, the cooperative will pool resources to buy premium scope time at a greatly reduced rate.  Benefits of being an active co-op member will include:

  1. Having a voice in what to shoot with group time
  2. Getting to write the script and "drive the rig" when your chosen object is imaged
  3. Access to all raw data acquired by the co-op before and during your membership.
  4. Full private copyright over your own post-processed version of group data
  5. The ability to purchase private scope time at the discounted group rate.
  6. Access to forums to discuss and share processing techniques used on our data
  7. A private sub-domain to post your images here at astrophotos.org
  8. An Email address in the astrophotos.org domain
Have you ever wanted to image those objects that never clear your northern horizon?  Soon you'll be able to, for far less than the cost of a ticket to Sydney and lugging your gear to the Outback.  GRAS operates 12 premium scopes at dark sites in New Mexico and Spain, with another site coming in Australia in 2012.

Their scopes run the gamut, from short, fast Takahashi Epsilons, to long, slower scopes like RCOS 12.5" Ritchey-Chretiens, and huge 17" Corrected Dall-Kirkhams, on Bisque Paramount mounts.  High quality guiding, automated guide-star acquisition, FLI and SBIG cameras, plate solving, auto-focusing, all at your disposal!  Buying just one setup like that is a $25,000 prospect or more, but through GRAS, we have access to all 12, for a lower hourly rate.

Scope time is cheaper the more minutes the group commits to buy per month.   For example, access to an RCOS 12.5" runs $148 per hour at the new moon if we buy only $160 of time per month.   However, if we pool our resources as a group, and buy only $490 of time per month, we get access to the same scope for half that.

Co-op prices are expected to be $40 per lunar cycle per member, paid by Paypal, with a $100 one-time membership fee.  The $100 fee goes straight into the community pool of minutes, and also covers new members gaining access to the prior bank of work paid for by early adopters.  Therefore, the $100 membership fee will not apply to the first twenty members to join.

We will form the co-op, join GRAS and begin imaging when we have 12 committed members willing to invest $40 per month.  This will give us ten hours of imaging per month.  The more members we acquire, the more time per month we acquire.... and the cheaper it would be to acquire private time of your own.

Please Email jeff@astrophotos.org to express your interest.