Lunatico - much more than the CloudWatcher
If you have purchased a CloudWatcher, you are the owner of our flagship product, which has been in production now since 2008 in which time over 2200 units have been sold worldwide. You have probably heard of, or own the Solo and possibly also the Dragonfly.
If you were to imagine life at Lunatico, you might think of Jaime, the owner and developer of our products, crouched over a laptop, feverishly working on the latest software release, or in the lab, soldering the components for the prototype of the next generation CloudWatcher. That’s certainly part of the story, but you may be surprised to know that Lunatico are active across the spectrum of Astronomy related products and beyond. We thought you might be interested to take a look ‘backstage’ and hear about some of the exciting projects that Lunatico are involved in.
Size matters
At least it does when it comes to observatories. If you have a really big telescope, you need a really big dome to house it and that brings plenty of challenges when it comes to the motors and their control software. So, when a customer in the US needed an expert to develop the software for their latest six-meter dome, who did they call? You guessed it! Here is a picture of Jaime on a recent visit, checking progress on the installation. We’d love to share the name of the client, but we wouldn’t want you to be visited by the Men in Black!
There are telescopes and telescopes…
And then there are telescopes from Deep Sky Instruments. If you want to see what is happening at the cutting edge of telescope production, check out DSI’s website. You might be surprised that the first link on the homepage will bring you back to us! Lunatico is proud to be working with DSI to provide control systems for their RCOS range of products.
It takes a herculean effort to get that perfect image
Good news then, that there’s an appropriately named Canadian company out there to do the job. If you can tear yourself away from their exciting range of astrographs, you’ll see our name credited on their ultra-neat HTEC Commander.Â
Heading south
Having visited the US and Canada, it seems only fair to head to the southern hemisphere, which is exactly what Jaime and Debora recently did as guests of Diego Colonnello and his wife Eva.
Fans of the Dylan O’Donnell’s YouTube channel, ‘Star Stuff’ will already recognise Diego from the episode back in March 2020 where he installed Dylan’s dome, equipped, of course, with Lunatico Products. Diego is something of a multi-talent. As well as building some of the best Newtonian telescopes in the business, he has also produced some astounding micro-photographs, the perfect counterpoint to images of the cosmos.
As you can see, there is never a dull moment at Lunatico. If you have a project that you would like us to be involved in, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via info@lunaticoastro.com.