Virtual Telescope Project Offers One Last Look at Elon’s Roadster

If your would like one last look at Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster before it drifts into the darkness of space, the Virtual Telescope project will offer a livestream early Wednesday.

The Virtual Telescope Project uses a very powerful set of real, robotic telescopes and makes their view remotely accessible online. The group has been tracking the Tesla since soon after the car was launched last week by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

“We will show you our images and movies of the Tesla we made capturing it over the nights at the telescope and then we will see it live, while it is now very dim, going to be invisible soon,” the group posted on its website.

The “Goodbye, Tesla Roadster!” livestream will begin at 4:15 a.m. PT Wednesday.

The Virtual Telescope Project shared an image Monday from a single, 300-second exposure, remotely taken with the 16″-f/3.75 Tenagra III (“Pearl”) robotic telescope in Arizona, available as part of the partnership between the Virtual Telescope Project and Tenagra Observatories in Arizona.


The Roadster is a faint dot of light now, marked on the image above with a red line. At the time the image was taken, the car was about a million miles (1.7 million kilometers) from the U.S.

 

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