Things are Looking Up at SkyPi

Here is a quick update on our hosts at SkyPi: A week or so ago we received an update regarding the current status of hosting Insight Observatory's Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach (ATEO) at SkyPi Online Observatories from the owners, and with the news of all the current and planned growth and activity taking place at the SkyPi location in Pie Town, New Mexico, it was great to hear that we are still on schedule for setting up the ATEO in one of their pods in 2017. Many thanks to John and Janet at SkyPi for keeping us in the loop and for being super people to deal with!

If you haven't seen the SkyPi website yet I'd suggest taking a look at http://skypionline.com. In particular take a look at how the observatories themselves are constructed (ex: Phase 2 – Bravo).

AUTOMATED ROOF

These are really well-designed roll-off style observatories that will provide us with ample space for our scope and equipment. Sometimes co-hosting telescopes in a single roll-off roof type observatory can be tricky depending on how the roof is designed and how much space is allocated for each scope, but it is obvious that these have been engineered in a thoughtful manner.

And once we get our scope in place at SkyPi we certainly won't be lacking in the dark sky department: note that from the location of Pie Town itself the night skies can reach a Bortle scale rating of 1 which is about the best you can get (for a quick rundown of what the Bortle scale ratings mean see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale).

All in all, these are exciting times especially as we enter 2017!