Building Observatories Driven by Science

The design of the Global Jet Watch has been driven by the science. The challenge to be overcome is that optical astronomy can only be done at night, so observing at one single location limits time on sky. Building a global network distributed in longitude ensures that there's always access to the night and so time-lapse spectroscopy can be obtained.

Access to the Whole Sky

We are thrilled to be welcoming the David Mittelman Observatory as our newest observatory within the Global Jet Watch. Located at a beautifully dark, high altitude site in New Mexico, it opens up the Northern hemisphere and enables us to develop our research programmes in parts of the sky that were previously hard to monitor as well as we can in the Southern Hemisphere.

There are important black hole systems within constellations such as Cygnus in the North: our New Mexico site will now be able to make wonderful investigations of these. Our time-lapse spectroscopy has been underway at this site since September 2024, and the agile instrumentation we have deployed there is described below.

Around the Globe to Chase the Night

The telescopes are distributed in longitude and in latitude to ensure that there is always access to the night sky.

The GJW-NM observatory, the David Mittelman Observatory is in New Mexico, USA and provides the most western coverage within the GJW network.

The GJW-CL observatory is in Chile like 70% of the world’s astronomical infrastructure. Its location boasts 95% clear skies for observing.

The GJW-OX observatory is the northern-most station. It was developed as a testbed during the pandemic and was the first to receive a dual-beam Aquila spectrograph.

The GJW-SA observatory is the second to be solar-powered. While it has the most similar timezone to GJW-OX, it reaches across the southern skies.

The GJW-IN observatory is the first to be powered by our nearest star. Solar panels harvest sunlight so we can observe starlight!

The GJW-WA observatory is almost midway between GJW-OZ and GJW-IN.

The GJW-OZ observatory was the first to be constructed, and the first to receive the original Aquila spectrograph.

THE GLOBAL JET WATCH IN NUMBERS:

60+

Astronomical Cameras On-Sky

60

Seconds to Robotic Target Acquisition

500,000+

Remote Dome Operations

Rugged Infrastructure, Globally Coordinated

Intricate and well designed system engineering make for resilience in round-the-clock observing. All components in the observatory are switchable remotely, over the internet, both for their electricity and their signal transmission. This is an essential pre-requisite for robotic round-the-clock operations.

Even the control of the observatories themselves is robotic: their shutters open and close at a command from the other side of the planet, and they rotate so that their opening is always aligned with where the telescope wants to look. The telescopes can acquire their targets within 60 seconds.

The Observatories in South Africa and India are powered by custom solar farms to be resilient to challenges in local infrastructure. The solar farms harvest light from our nearest star by day so we can observe more distant stars by night!

Agile Instrumentation, Built for Purpose

What makes the Global Jet Watch unique is its spectroscopic data stream: spectroscopy is a challenging endeavour and there are no spectrographs available off the shelf for the research goals. Instrument Scientist Steven Lee designed a spectrograph (the Aquila) especially for the Global Jet Watch.

The Aquila is a wonderful instrument because it has high throughput and appropriately high spectral resolution for the astrophysics dynamics under investigation. Our new Aquila-2 spectrographs span the entire optical rainbow.