NWAG Telescope Control Web Site

This is my main project that I am currently working on, and it is very exciting.... I intend to develop a web page from which the telescope(s) at the Vernonia Peak Telescope Observatory can be controlled and interacted with. I believe this is a unique effort, since I have not seen anything quite like this done anywhere else. While there are a number of efforts going on to remotely control a telescope from the internet, none of these efforts are aimed towards providing a solution that reflects the true nature of the operation of telescopes at most observatories. Instead, these efforts provide a single point solution, i.e. one person in complete control of a telescope, from a single web browser.

This is NOT the way a typical telescope observatory operates. Instead, the operation of a telescope is usually a collaborative effort handled by a group of scientist, engineers, and telescope operators all interacting together at the same time. Therefore, this web site will be aimed at providing a collaborative environment in which the NWAG members will be able to monitor what is happening with their telescope, share thoughts and ideas, and watch together as results are achieved. It is true that this web site will not be able to achieve the same level of synergy that can be achieve by a group of people working together in the control room of a telescope. However, I feel that this factor will become less and less of an issue as time goes on, simply because both the internet and computers will become ever more powerful, and we will eventually be able to start using additional technologies such as live streaming voice and video. These technologies will help to create an even better collaborative environment, and thus build even more of this synergy. For now, this is a first step and I plan to provide a way to share the basic tools an information needed for a workable collaborative telescope operating environment.

Currently, this web site is under development and not fully functional... This is my testing area, expect lots of broken links, and functionality for now... But do come on in, look around and feel free to make suggestions if you like.

The NWAG Telescope Control Web Site can be entered here.

Cookies and Form Posting

This is a servlet I wrote some time ago just to help me understand how to work with servlets. This is nothing earth shattering, so if you want to play, I will have you enter a couple of things in a simple form. Then I will insert a harmless little cookie, with this information, on your computer. This cookie will expire after a day so I will not leave any trash around on your system for very long. One of the things I wanted to do is see what it takes to send and receive a cookie. The following form will POST this information to my server, and my servlet should respond with a congratulations message! You can follow up an see the information that was stored in the cookie also, just follow the links....

I Know..... THIS IS BORING!!!!!!