The Abbey Ridge Observatory shares the same software and most of the same capabilities as the Burke-Gaffney Observatory. Therefore, refer to the documentation at the BGO site as follows:
- Command Reference (Basic)
- Command Reference (Advanced)
- Observer Privileges
- Processing Command Reference
- Communicator App Help
The differences between the BGO and the ARO are principally:
- The telescope, cameras, and available filters are different - see the tech specs page
- ARO supports communicating by Twitter, Facebook, and email (and not SMS Text)
- The site is nearby the BGO, but much darker
- Other than the smaller field size, their performance is similar, even though the BGO scope is much larger
- The horizon is obstructed non-uniformly in some directions due to trees and the owner's house (the BGO is uniformly ok to 20 degrees altitude)
- There are some differences in default settings (exposure times, etc.)