The Photon Ranch (PTR) project from Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) is a budding educational endeavor that focuses on real-time observing and primarily manual scheduling across a heterogeneous telescope network. The network includes both PTR-owned telescopes as well as school and private observatories, with current test sites in California, New Mexico, and Australia. A self-paced extended mastery-based course is central to the functioning of the PTR network. Admission is by application, and observing credits on the telescope network are earned by completing labs and tasks within the course. Students can be of all ages, but the course is primarily aimed at keen middle school students. The project’s goal is to maximize the depth to which students can learn, explore, and undertake scientific investigations using research grade instrumentation - scaling for depth of experience rather than for raw numbers of users. This talk will outline the PTR project, its educational design, and how the telescope networks function and support this educational approach. Currently, the project is looking for “alpha” or “early adopter” students and observatories as well as educators who may have proposals to test the network in useful or unique ways. In 2023, approximately 12 telescopes at 8 sites will be added to the current test telescopes as the project scales up to support more users and observatories.
