Telescope farm: A business opportunity in New Zealand?

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kingdragonfly

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#323355 22-Nov-2025 14:37

I'm not interested in setting up a telescope farm, but if someone already lives wishing live in an isolated area, and wants to make some income, this could be it.

As could work for future retirees wanting some income in an isolated place, though you have to consider you'll be by necessity be away from nearby large medical centres.

In New Zealand, good places for star gazing, some are dark sanctuary

Lake Tekapo (South Island)
Stewart Island / Rakiura
Great Barrier Island (Aotea)
Chatham Islands
Wairarapa (North Island)
Fiordland (South Island)

Texas farm fights light pollution with telescope

CBS19

SaltyNZ

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#3436703 22-Nov-2025 16:10

How long does it take a baby telescope to grow to saleable size?

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networkn

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#3436710 22-Nov-2025 17:37

How does one actually farm telescopes?

Are there regulations around what constitutes free range telecoping?

I have SO many questions :)

SaltyNZ

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#3436761 22-Nov-2025 17:58

networkn:

How does one actually farm telescopes?

Are there regulations around what constitutes free range telecoping?

I have SO many questions :)

I mean you see those terrible pictures of telescopes locked up in observatories barely bigger than their own length. Covers that are designed to blot out the light until the astronomer wants to let some in. It's just so sad. There's really no comparison with a free range telescope.

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networkn

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#3436763 22-Nov-2025 18:03

SaltyNZ:

I mean you see those terrible pictures of telescopes locked up in observatories barely bigger than their own length. Covers that are designed to blot out the light until the astronomer wants to let some in. It's just so sad. There's really no comparison with a free range telescope.

The problem is the price of those free range telecopes. It's hard to justify the extra. I feel bad when I buy non-free range, but the cost of living...

SepticSceptic

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#3436900 22-Nov-2025 23:07

Will telescope farms be exempt from any ETS requirements?

kingdragonfly

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#3436922 23-Nov-2025 08:47

I'm not a farmer, but I think New Zealand's new ETS rules for farmland conversion limit the amount of good land that can be converted to exotic forestry.

You can use any land you want to for the telescope scheme. A farm seemed natural because it's more likely to be away from city lights, you might have spare land, and you might be comfortable living in an isolated situation.

Running power to several buildings would have a large outlay of cash.

Business fibre

These are just guesses. And I'm sure I got the figures wrong.

Uplink (upload) is what matters most for transferring raw FITS/video out of an observatory.

Business fibre products in NZ advertise 500/500 Mbps (symmetrical) unlimited business plans

However usually 500Mbps is not guaranteed, unless you pay a lot.

On a pure-bandwidth basis, a 500 Mbps unlimited symmetric fibre link could theoretically carry

hundreds of typical long-exposure telescopes uploading their raw frames
a few dozen heavy imagers
or about ten continuous 50 Mbps live streams.

Starlink for Internet? - nope

The top listed fixed-site tier for Starlink’s has a 2 TB Local-Priority plan at NZ$1,015 /month.

I use a conservative uplink = 25 Mbps as a representative upload capacity.

So 5 full-time telescopes running at a typical long-exposure imaging (moderate cadence) could be supported by one link.

Even one video streaming / continuous high bit-rate planetary / live high-frame-rate capture live stream at 50 Mbps is about 16.2 TB. So it would exceed Starlink.