Controlling telescopes remotely is becoming almost routine for astronomers at Internet2 universities. High-speed connections to the telescopes are vital because of the quantity of data required to adjust the telescopes’ positions in real time.

If controlling a single telescope isn't enough for you, you can operate as many as 20 telescopes, scattered across the globe, that have been linked together to act like a single machine. Data from the entire array of telescopes is streamed at high speeds to a single site, where it is consolidated.

This spiral galaxy with a supernova was photographed with a telescope operated over the public Internet, using a facility called Hands-On Universe: