We've had some questions about pricing so I thought I'd write up a message. Joining LightBuckets is absolutely free - you don't have to purchase anything up front. When you are ready to use one of our telescopes, you can find the most recent prices on the Learn More page by going to the observatory browser on the bottom right corner of the page. If you view our Quick Tour video, you will see exactly where this is.

Our prices for Full Control Imaging as of today (subject to change) are:

LB-0001 - 24" RC - Rodeo, NM - 175 points per hour
LB-0005 - 20" RC - Mayhill, NM - 150 points per hour
LB-0004 - 14.5" RC - Pingelly, Western Australia - 125 points per hour

Our prices for Easy Imaging in color as of today (subject to change) are:

Level 1 - 20 minutes of imaging time - 20 points
Level 2 - 32 minutes of imaging time - 40 points
Level 3 - 40 minutes of imaging time - 60 points
Level 4 - 50 minutes of imaging time - 83 points
Level 5 - 60 minutes of imaging time - 113 points
Level 6 - 70 minutes of imaging time - 148 points
Level 7 - 80 minutes of imaging time - 155 points
Level 8 - 90 minutes of imaging time - 181 points
Level 9 - 100 minutes of imaging time - 210 points
Level 10 - 120 minutes of imaging time - 260 points

A point costs $1.00 (US). You can receive a discount on points by purchasing them in bulk. This means that your effective cost would be less than $1.00 (US) per point. Here is the breakdown of bulk point discounts:



To encourage customers to continue to image while the Moon is visible, we offer Moon discounts whenever the Moon is more than 25% illuminated. Moon discounts are automatically calculated for you, so you don’t have to even think about it….if the Moon is visible while you’re imaging, you get our Moon discount. The discount amount is calculated by taking the percentage of the Moon that is illuminated multiplied by 25%.

You can also receive an additional schedule discount if you chose Schedule for Later (5% discount) or Best Available (10% discount). The reason why we give customers these discounts is that Schedule for Later allows us to have better visibility into the flow of our business, which is worth something to us. Scheduling with Best Available allows us to pick the telescope and the time for your imaging run, meaning that we can fill unused "inventory" with these runs, which is also valuable to us.

So, to net it out, it is free to sign up for LightBuckets. Once you do that, you can go all the way through to getting ready to submit your imaging plan to an observatory without paying anything. Hopefully this will help answer any pricing questions you might have...but let us know if you have more by posting in the forums.

Steve