I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with our universe/solar system/moons and I just recently found two of the coolest websites that I had to share with you. Did you know that there are a few telescopes around the world that will allow you to control them via the internet? You can take pictures of the heavens and these sites will email them to you FOR FREE! It’s true. What’s even better is that you don’t have to be an expert as to what you want to photograph as it’s all laid out for you.

The MicroObservatory allows you to create as many “job orders” as you’d like and their telescopes can take pictures of our nearest neighbor, the moon, or it can even take pictures of galaxies that are thousands of light years away. Obviously the weather plays an important factor on how your photograph will turn out, so the MicroObservatory also gives you weather updates so you can see if tonight’s the perfect night for your job order to take place. I tried taking a photograph of our moon as well as a few planets and I received the photographs within a few business days. They were sent to me via email and were attached as jpeg images. It’s truly awesome.

The second telescope site that you can have take pictures of the heavens is the Bradford Robotic Telescope. Their telescopes have a few more celestial objects that you can photograph and they do take a bit longer for you to receive the photos, but nonetheless it’s free and it’s a really moxie service.

Check them out and let me know how your photos turn out! Please feel free to submit your photo links in the comments below! I’d love to see them!

Milky Way Galaxy (top) and Our Moon (bottom)