[Aaargh20318]

> Also it sounds like the remote operation hardware and software are provided by him

As a backyard astrophotographer, this hardware and software is pretty much standard even if you don’t send your equipment to a remote site and is part of the kit you send to the remote site.

While you can still manually point your telescope if you wanted, I don’t think many who are in the hobby still do this. Most people will use so-called ‘GoTo’ mounts. You basically tell it where to point and it will automatically do so and keep tracking that location (to compensate for the rotation of our planet).

It’s a little bit more involved than I’m describing it but not much.