U of M opens new observatory, telescope with special features

A new observatory at the University of Manitoba just needs your phone and a Wi-Fi connection to help stargazers connect with the cosmos.

The university opened a new remote observatory in Glenlea, Man. on Tuesday. The observatory consists of a dome and a CDK 350 telescope.

“It's not so easy to bring everybody out to Hawaii or to Chile, and actually work with some of the big eight-metre telescopes that we have today,” said Tyrone Woods, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba.

“This gives them a chance to actually get that hands-on experience that's going to be invaluable on the job market, whether they're working in astronomy or any of the number of fields that overlap with astronomical techniques and methodology today.”

Students are able to access the telescope at the observatory and make readings from anywhere in the world if they have an internet connection. (Jamie Dowsett/CTV News Winnipeg)

The telescope can be accessed from a laptop or a mobile device anywhere in the world by students who can use the equipment to capture astronomical images and learn more about what lies beyond planet Earth.

"Two of our grad students have been studying globular clusters, so these dense knots of stars that we think are the building blocks of galaxies, and actually measuring the ages of these stellar populations and trying to understand how they formed, how they tell us about where we came from, and how the Milky Way came to be," Woods said.

Those behind the project said they’re hoping to build a larger observatory in Northwest Territories in the future to study orbiting satellites and communicate with them using lasers.