45.5016° N · 73.5672° W · 1 142 m ASL

We keep watch on the oldest light in town.

AETHER is an open research station on the northern ridge — ten telescopes, one atomic clock, and an archive that has never once been closed to the public. Everything below is computed from the real sky, right now.

Enter the sky field Read the record
UTC--:--:--
LST--ʰ--ᵐ
SUN—
MOON —
SEEING—
01

The instrument wall

Every clear night the ridge reports itself. These are live values from the station bus — resampled for display, never smoothed into lies.

Seeing

FWHM
0.00″

Turbulence across the 20 m above primary mirror.

Humidity

RH
0%

Dew point margin held above 4 °C by the mirror heaters.

Sky background

mag arcsec⁻²
measuredmodel

Photon rate

e⁻ s⁻¹
detector Adetector B

Dome

SLIT 100%
AZ 000°WIND 0.0 m/s

Bands in use

tonight

    Uptime

    since 1962
    00000days
    00hrs
    00min
    00sec

    Archive availability across 63 years of operation.

    02

    The sky field

    A live planisphere: every object is projected from its real equatorial coordinates into horizontal coordinates for the moment you are looking at it. Drag to move through time, click a star to interrogate it.

    LST — SUN — FOV 180° OBJECTS 0

    drag to pan · shift-scroll to zoom · double-click to reset

    03

    Four programs, one ridge

    Each mission owns a slice of the night. Hover a card to bring it forward.

    04

    The record

    0%
    05

    Request telescope time

    The ridge allocates 30 % of every clear night to visiting programs. Tell us what you want to look at and roughly how long you need. Proposals are read by humans, in order, twice a month.

    • 30 %open time
    • 14 dmedian reply
    • 0fees, ever