Developing a Prototype for Remote Viewing of Telescope Images Using Mobile Devices

摘要

This document describes the development of a prototype to share a series of images captured from the eyepiece of a telescope in activities of scientific dissemination in an astronomical observatory. The developed prototype includes the use of a smartphone for capturing images and another mobile device as receiving equipment; streaming protocols are used to improve the use of a WiFi network during the transmission of images, reaching reasonable results in the reception of astronomical images. To attach the smartphone to the telescopes several prototypes of fixing systems or adapter were developed, generating a whole learning process in which finally a rapid prototyping technique was used to build a stable but flexible base element in order to enable the adaptation of the device to a set of different patterns of capturing images, in case of this could be necessary. Some developed tests made it possible to identify potential problems of the communication scheme of the selected Wi-Fi network, so that a redesign of the communications patterns was generated taking advantage of the configuration features of the smartphones used in the solution.