Using the National Schools’ Observatory over the Internet
Knowing we would be looking at space and the big bang as a topic I had registered for an account at the National Schools’ Observatory and requested additional user IDs for my pupils.
Using the telescope couldn’t be easier. Much of the process is automated so you don’t need to know anything fancy like stellar coordinates etc.
You are given an initial selection of potentially interesting things to observe like the moon, stars, planets and galaxies. Once you have selected, you are told the probability of seeing your object.
That’s all there is to it. My smallish class requested a number of different objects, things they were likely to see within a short timeframe (since we didn’t have months to wait).
Two weeks later we downloaded the image files and the free software, and decoded them. These are the actual photographs, cropped but otherwise untouched. My pupils were thrilled and pleased with the photos they had requested. Here are the best ones
Saturn
Venus![]()
I would recommend the NSO site to anyone who teaches about space.

