Titan Astronomical Observatory, inc.

The goal of our nonprofit is to purchase a 10m radio telescope, relocate it, modernize it, create a user-friendly web interface for scheduling time on the telescope, and then automate the data collection, processing, and delivery to the user. We hope that by owning the telescope outright as opposed to leasing, and taking steps to reduce our recurring costs like utilizing solar power and hosting all of our services locally, the fee for our service will be substantially lower than other telescopes of this size and capability, specifically low enough for students, amateur astronomers, or the general public to reasonably afford.

Our services will initially be aimed towards more advanced users with pre-existing knowledge of radio astronomy, simply so we can focus on the core functionality, but once the scheduling/control systems and data pipeline are robust, our long term mission is to lower the bar as far as possible. Specifically, we'd like to address a problem inherent to radio astronomy and RF in general, where most people only ever experience it as words in a textbook or daunting math equations, and lack any opportunities to see it in action or observe real astronomical signals, unless they want to dedicate their life to a PhD to work in major observatories, or build a radio telescope themselves which requires a fairly substantial understanding as a basic requirement.

Our vision is to provide the resources to learn the fundamentals of radio astronomy alongside real-world examples from this telescope publicly online, and then offer users the ability to use that same telescope to run their own observations, with guides and lessons to accompany the different possible targets, and an easy to understand user interface that walks them through the entire process.

Our hope is that by bridging the gap between textbooks and large scale observatories, we will inspire more people to pursue radio astronomy, and otherwise help the general public to appreciate how radio astronomy works and what it can tell us about the universe we live in.