On Doug's kitchen table sat his 486 computer. Stretching across the kitchen floor were two 150' telephone cables. These continued through the back door and out into his back yard to their adjacent termini: one at an ST6 CCD camera, one at a 10" f/6.3 LX200 telescope. With the 'scope polar aligned and CCD camera just mounted, we headed inside to warmer climes.

Now oblivious of even the existence of the 'scope and camera, we seated ourselves in front of the computer. A pair of programs from Software Bisque for controlling the 'scope and camera were running under Windows. An ST6 program from SBIG was running in a DOS session under Windows. This program is used first, as we set the ST6 cooler to keep the CCD at -50 C. We flip to the SkyPro planetarium program. It shows a 100 area around Leo. A circular yellow marker surrounds Denebola -- this is where the 'scope is pointing. Using the mouse, we click on Arcturus. A box pops up and we click on the button labelled "Slew to". The yellow marker moves rapidly to the new location. We flip to SkyPro CCD and take a picture. Moments later, our 57k baud connection with the CCD starts pouring data onto the screen: a picture of Arcturus appears. Our stellar quarry is not quite centered, so we pop up a hand paddle on the screen. Pushing the "West" and "North" buttons a couple of times and taking a couple more pictures, we get Arcturus centered. Pressing a button, the 'scope is now perfectly synchronized with the sky. Objects we dial in subsequently will be almost dead center. Of course, what we had at this point was a centered doughnut. So, popping up the focus control window, we quickly achieve pinpoint focus -- by the numbers. No guesswork here!

Are we having fun yet? You bet! And now the really mind-blowing fun begins!! But wait -- the kettle is boiling, so Doug has to fix a cup of tea. OK, now we're set... We point at M53 on the star map and slew the 'scope to it. Of course, all we see is the circular yellow marker moving on the screen; all we hear is the hum of the hard drives. But somewhere outside, immersed in a cold winter's night, an LX200 was spinning 'round, its noisy motors wailing away. We take a 20 second image. The software automatically takes both a dark and a light frame and adds them together for us before showing the final result in phosphorescent glory. Wow! A beautiful globular cluster sits before us -- but perhaps a shorter exposure would be better! We take a variety of exposures before moving on.

Next we visit nearby NGC 5053, the large, faint "companion" to M53. Its faintness causes us to flip over to the ST6 program for a Track and Accumulate (or "Track & Acc" for short). The camera sends us an image. We pick a guide star. Then, following our instructions, it takes 8 15-second exposures and adds them together, perfectly aligned. Very nice! Now on to the Black Eye Galaxy, M64. We easily image its famous obscuring feature. Then NGC 4725, a 10th magnitude galaxy in Coma, shows off its nice structure for our camera.

It's hard to believe only a couple of hours has passed. Already, we have many images stored away on disk! But Doug needs to get some sleep, so he lies down on the living room couch, leaving me alone with the computer. I need some sleep too, but this was much too exciting an experience to let pass!

I happily image away for the next 2.5 hours: NGC4565 (with dust lane, of course); a concentrated group of galaxies in Coma (easily a dozen show up thanks to a 5-minute Track & Acc); M13, M92, and NGC 6229; a couple of fields near the variable W Herculis; M56; M57 (the central star was obvious in 20 seconds!).

Finally, Doug got up to see what I was doing. I showed him an image of M27 I had just taken. M27 was barely visible in the image. Doug looked out the back door and called me over. Outside, only two stars were visible in a sky covered entirely by cloud! The things you miss with indoor observing! Oh well.

We wrapped up the session at 5 am with an image of the Double Double in Lyra (through cloud) and perused our collection of images from the past few hours. We did a little image procesing on a couple of them, including the application of some "maximum entropy" using the Hidden Image program. Finally, I went home to catch a couple hours sleep.

Is this real observing? Staying indoors (in this case, with literally all the comforts of home) and observing in this way is a very different experience. You are completely cut off from the sky. Direct observation is replaced by sensor, encoder, and CCD outputs. Would virtual observing be an appropriate term? Whatever it's called, this type of observing is here now in a big way, and will only grow in popularity as the cost of doing it continues to drop. It is incredibly fun, and there is something to be said for being inside -- away from the numbing cold of winter or the mosquito swarms of summer. Perhaps "real" observing is best reserved for those 2 or 3 nights a year when the outdoor nighttime conditions here in southern Ontario allow for comfortable observing. Hmmmmm...