RealVNC helps astronomers to explore the universe from the comfort of their own desks
Remote access to images from the world's largest telescopes at Keck Observatory
20th October 2009: Images from world's largest optical and infrared telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory, perched on the summit of Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea Volcano, can now be viewed by astronomers across the United States. By deploying RealVNC, screens from the giant twin telescopes are displayed on desktops at the Observatory's headquarters in Kamuela, on Hawaii's Big Island, as well as at research facilities across the United States mainland.
In addition to helping astronomers probe the universe millions of light years away without having to climb the 4200 meter volcano, VNC® is also being used to provide remote control and management capabilities for Keck's engineers and IT administrators. This means that they can make round-the-clock adjustments, trouble-shoot, perform upgrades and install new software. VNC also gives staff members secure access to data and applications running on their office PCs, whether they are working from home or travelling.
"RealVNC is making a major contribution to our work at all levels," said Jon Chock at Keck Observatory. "In addition to being able to share observational data from our telescopes with colleagues as it is collected, the remote access facilities for support and office staff help to enhance the efficient running of the Observatory."
VNC runs on a number of operating systems such as Windows, Mac and Unix and provides configurable access restrictions and control rights that can be set so that any number of users can remotely access and view the same desktop. It also supports restricted access to ensure one user does not connect during another user's session if required.
"We use RealVNC Enterprise Edition for remote management of our IT systems and secure user access as it provides high levels of security to protect our sensitive work," said Jon Chock. "Enterprise Edition gives our IT team the ability to set strong encryption preferences, access restrictions and authentication; while the deployment tool makes it easy to manage with minimal disk and memory requirements. The RealVNC licensing and support package also provided us with the best price-performance and the solution has helped us to reduce our operating costs."
"We are delighted that our technology is helping astronomers in their work to explore and unlock the secrets of the universe," said Dr Andy Harter, CEO at RealVNC. "Keck Observatory demonstrates graphically the wide range of applications for VNC from the extraordinary to more commonplace requirements such as remote administration and teleworking."
About Keck Observatory
The W. M. Keck Observatory operates twin 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. The two telescopes feature a suite of advanced instrumentation including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrographs and a world-leading laser-guide-star adaptive optics system. The Observatory is a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.
www.keckobservatory.org
About RealVNC
RealVNC was founded by the original developers of VNC to promote, enhance and commercialize VNC. With over 100 million software downloads, VNC has been used widely in hundreds of different products and applications, from helpdesks to virtualization. Many millions of licenses to RealVNC's commercial products have been shipped to customers throughout the world, and across all sectors. Customers range from individuals to the world's largest organizations.
www.realvnc.com
For press information contact:
Peter Rennison / Allie Andrews at PRPR: pr@prpr.co.uk or allie@prpr.co.uk