Three weeks ago during my stay at Rancho Hidalgo, Gene Turner’s astronomy village near Animas, New Mexico, I had the pleasure of being introduced to Glynn Burke by our mutual friend Gene. Gene explained that Glynn is a brilliant engineer who is setting up a network of computer controlled telescopes that can be used for educational purposes remotely, by amateur astronomers situated anywhere on the planet.
Glynn operates a network of computer controlled telescopes in Manitoba, Canada, and also has 10 scopes installed (in various stages of completion, seven of them fully operational, I believe) at Rancho Hidalgo under the pristine skies of dark New Mexico. For a tour of his setup and explanatory material, see MyTelescope.com.
The accompanying video shows Glynn walking us through a demonstration of how his robotic telescope control works, and was shot by me at the ranch two weeks ago — in the film you’ll see Glynn and my dad, John Eicher, and hear me asking Glynn questions about how his scopes work. (Note: When you click the link to the video,
you'll find it below the three-part interview with the Meteorite Men.) Glynn was imaging the famous galaxy-quasar pair NGC 4319-Markarian 205, the subject of much controversy over the years, and he created a stunning picture of it. The object became famous in the 1970s when astronomer Halton Arp claimed he detected a light bridge connecting the galaxy and quasar, which lay at extremely disparate redshifts, and therefore the whole method of using redshifts to determine extragalactic distances must be wrong. Instead, it was Arp who was wrong.
In any case, watch the video and you’ll see a fascinating demo of how Glynn’s telescopes work and how you can access them at Mytelescope.com.
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