International Astronomical Remote Present Observation on IRC

On March 6-7, 1997, an international ast ronomical remote present observation(RPO) was made on Internet Relay Chat(IRC) first time. Seven groups in four count ries, China, United States, Canada and Great Britain, used the 1 meter telescope of Yunnan observatory together by the way of remote present observation. Within minutes, images were “On-line” by FTP, and every one was able to get them by anonymous ftp and discuss them on IRC from different widely separated sites. The important advantage of this event is that all Internet connections were made via a local phone line connection to an Internet provider. The long-distance connections then were routed through the free Internet communications backbone, thus avoiding the extremely high cost of transcontinental long-distance telephone connections. The advantages of using this new medium are countless. Scientists now can take the observ atory with them while on assignments anywhere around the world. Enhanced educational programs can also be achieved with this technology. In fact, another RPO test was made in Dec, 1995. However, we just used email to send and discuss images, at that time the sucesses of that one was limited.