Expanding Fisheye Webcam Network Now Capable of Monitoring Most of the Night Sky Robert J. Nemiroff (Michigan Tech), Hugo.E. Schwarz (CTIO), The CONCAM Collaboration, The TASCA Collaboration

Abstract The growing global network of astronomical fisheye web cameras is now capable of monitoring most of the night sky all of the time. The increased coverage has been made possible by two new CONtinuous CAMeras (CONCAMs) deployed in Earth's southern hemisphere, and the on-line capability of a similar southern hemisphere camera. The new CONCAM sites include the Siding Springs Observatory in Australia and the future site of the South Africa Large Telescope in Sutherland, South Africa. The Tololo All Sky Camera (TASCA) now provides four filter high resolution images, including light pollution bands from Cerro Tololo in Chile, completing global coverage. Potential scientific and educational uses for the growing network of cameras in the Night Sky Live network will be discussed. This work is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation

Objectives Primary Science Unprecedented temporal monitoring for GRB OTs, meteors, variable stars, comets, novae, supernovae Support Science Unprecedented ability to act as instantaneous cloud monitors, archival cloud monitors, generate all-sky transparency maps, all-sky emissivity maps Education / Outreach Unprecedented ability to show your class last night’s (real) sky, archival skies, monitor meteor showers in real time, show educational sky movies, run educational modules

Fisheye Night Sky Webcam Locations * designates active CONCAM, C designates deployed CONCAM, T designates TASCA. Dark areas are current night. Current world clouds are shown in white. This image is shown in real time on the home page of

Kitt Peak National Observatory, ArizonaMt. Wilson Observatory, California Mauna Kea Observatory, HawaiiWise Observatory, Israel Site-snapshots of 4 Current CONCAMs

Sites of Future CONCAMs Future CONCAM-like devices are currently scheduled to go on-line in New Jersey, Utah, and Argentina. If you would like a CONCAM at your location, please me at The nominal deploy license fee for a CONCAM now runs at $20K. This includes all hardware and software (the real cost).

Hardware CONCAMs are essentially fisheye lenses attached to CCDs run by a PC computer and connected to the internet. CONCAMs do not move - they are completely passive. Most simply put: light comes in the top, electricity comes in the bottom, and data flow out the bottom. In building CONCAMs, we have three montras: “If it moves, it breaks.” “The lens IS the dome.” “Don’t spend 90% of your time trying to get 10% more images.”

Data Availability: concam.net All recent images are available through All data are free and public domain. All FITS and JPG data are archived to DVDs (previously CDs). Each CONCAM node generates about 500Mb of raw image data per night. Higher level data products (e.g. photometry) are now being generated in real time for some CONCAMs.

Canonical CONCAM image

Scientific Milestones First CCD device to image the position of a gamma-ray burst during the time of the gamma-ray burst trigger (#1: GRB ) Most complete and uniform coverage of a meteor storm: the 2001 Leonids Most complete light curves for hundreds of bright variable stars starting from May 2000, when the first CONCAM was deployed on Kitt Peak. First devices to give real-time optical ground truth for the whole sky in support of major astronomical telescopes, including Gemini North, Keck, Subaru, IRTF, SpaceWatch, Wise, ING 4-m, Mayall 4-M, SARA, and WIYN. In May 2003, fisheye night sky webcams now image most of the night sky, most of the time. For example, were SN 1987A to go off tomorrow, there would be a good chance that a fisheye webcam saw it.

Future of Fisheye Night-sky Web cameras Proof of Concept: CONCAM-like devices work. They are useful. There are proliferating. Likely, from now on, there will always be fisheye night-sky webcams contributing to astronomy. There is much room for hardware improvement, including in sensitivity, global coverage, color coverage, temporal coverage, and pixel density. There is much room for software improvement, including in transient detection, stellar light curve monitoring, and the ability to trigger large telescopes There is much room for educational/outreach improvement, including the real-time production of educational night-sky movies, canned classroom educational modules demonstrations using these real sky images, and outreach-oriented interfaces that better explain the power of these images to anyone with a web browser.

Support