What is Deep Sky West?

Deep Sky West is a remote astrophotography observatory in New Mexico, USA and Chile.  We offer the opportunity for astrophotographer’s around the world to access clear skies without the need to travel and to use advanced astronomy and photography equipment without the need to own it themselves.

Deep Sky West is situated on a high altitude site (7,400 feet) near Rowe, New Mexico.  The site offers dark skies and suitable weather conditions that most astrophotographers around the world would otherwise be unable to utilize.

When does the roof open?

We open every clear night.

The normal open and close cycle for DSW is to open every day one hour before dusk and to close 30 minutes after sunrise.  The time between opening and astronomical dusk allows the systems time to reach thermal equilibrium and to perform other functions like flat acquisition.

All observatories require technical support whether they’re in a backyard or far from home, but remote observatories present a particular challenge for the obvious reasons: you can’t touch your system and depending on the infrastructure you might not even be able to see it.

Therefore, competent, local support is critical. Well-designed redundant systems help tremendously, but nothing replaces real human interaction. At Deep Sky West we have several support personnel with various areas of expertise including infrastructure, network and imaging system operations.

There are two ways you can get involved at Deep Sky West:

1. Rent a space and use your own equipment

This is remote imaging in the “classic” sense: you operate your equipment as you see fit, perhaps you work with a small group of friends and you split expenses—this is up to the team. In this model, individuals can host their own systems for an all-inclusive monthly fee of $800.

Alternatively, like-minded individuals can pool their equipment, financial and knowledge resources to create a small team. We can help team founders to find other team members throughout their network and the astrophotography community in general.

2. Subscribe to a Deep Sky West-operated system

This is an alternative to traditional purchases of telescope time.  Subscribe to any of the DSW-operated systems, make target selections and all members share all the data collected from everyone’s selections including your own!

Unlike the other service models, there is no waiting in queue and no fighting for optimal imaging time slots.  Our subscription model guarantees the highest data quality and deep integrations required to produce the best images. The typical integrations are 16 frames x 300, 600, 900 or 1800 seconds.  For example, standard wideband integrations are 16 x 900 on f/5+ systems, and 16 x 1800 for narrowband.  This varies by target (i.e., some targets require shorter exposures for HDR, etc.)