JMPIERCE%USMCP6.BITNET@vm.tcs.tulane.edu (JIM PIERCE) (08/24/90)
Hello networkers. Is there any CCD software for the Amiga.
I am an amateur astronomer and I would like to run a CCD camera
with my telescope. Mount Palomar ( 200 inch ) supposedly uses an
Amiga 2000 for image-processing. Are there any such programs
that could be used by the rest of us. { I ask this because all I
ever see in the astronomy magazines are programs for ibm and the mac.
The Amiga being such an excellent graphics engine, such should be
available for it. } Thanks for any info. P.S. Software specifically
designed for control of a CCD and astronomical image-processing
would definately be preffered instead of a generic program.
* <JMPIERCE@USMCP6.BITNET> Jim Pierce at Univ. of Southern Mississippi
* Disclaimer: 'Documentation? There's no documentation for Bitnet.'terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts) (08/24/90)
In article <28303@nigel.ee.udel.edu> JMPIERCE%USMCP6.BITNET@vm.tcs.tulane.edu (JIM PIERCE) writes: > > Hello networkers. Is there any CCD software for the Amiga. >I am an amateur astronomer and I would like to run a CCD camera >with my telescope. Mount Palomar ( 200 inch ) supposedly uses an >Amiga 2000 for image-processing. Are there any such programs >that could be used by the rest of us. { I ask this because all I >ever see in the astronomy magazines are programs for ibm and the mac. >The Amiga being such an excellent graphics engine, such should be >available for it. } Thanks for any info. P.S. Software specifically >designed for control of a CCD and astronomical image-processing >would definately be preffered instead of a generic program. The person who can help you the most is Fred Harris at Cal Tech. His phone number is 818-356-4118. He is the engineer in charge of CCD development at Cal Tech & was responsible for getting the A2000 at Palomar. He is an Amiga enthusiast who would be glad to help you. He does not have access to the network so you will have to call him. We are presently working with him to develope a large mosaic of 4 2048X2048 CCDs for the new instruments to be mounted on the 10M telescope in Hawaii. Here at Lick Observatory there are a large number of us in the technical staff (about 7 at last count) who have Amigas for personal use & try to evangalize for it with limited success so far. The attitude around here is 'if it isn't a Sun it can't do anything important'. One of our astronomers (Dr. David Rank) has gotten a foothold for the Amiga by connecting an ALive cartrige to a A500 & monitoring the video signal from the Guide CCD camera at the 120" telescope at Mt. Hamilton. He wrote some Basic code (he does not like C) that measures the seeing on selected stars and displays the data in real time. He was able to show that the guide program for the telescope was faulty. That system is still in use (the night assistants & astronomers also like to play games on it but no one talks about that). He has a similar system that he takes with him on an airplane to do IR astronomy above as much of the atmosphere as possible. This plane flys out of NASA Aimes in Palo Alto & the Amiga has put the Macs that the NASA people love to shame. | Terry Ricketts | Internet: terry@helios.ucsc.edu | Senior Electronics Engineer | loel@helios.ucsc.edu | Lick Observatory Electronics Lab | Phone: 408-459-2110 | University of Calif, Santa Cruz |
EW%ccv.UIA.AC.BE@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Karel De Bruyne/Electronic Workshop UIA Belgium) (09/06/90)
Hello, I guess some of you might be interessed to know there is a discussion list about High Resolution Imaging in Astronomy at <LISTSERV@HEARN.BITNET>. I don't know if there is much activity, and if they already *know* our Amiga's excist :-) , but you can have a look. Karel De Bruyne EW@CCV.UIA.AC.BE or EW@BANUIA52.BITNET Computer Center/Electronic Workshop University of Antwerp Belgium
jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) (09/17/90)
guineau@wjg.enet.dec.com (W. John Guineau) writes: >I haven't been following this thread so this may have already been answered. >I was under the impression that CCD's were not 'cumulative' light collectors >and so are useless for dim things like deep sky. I'm no CCD expert, but... They are cumulative. And depending on the electronics on the CCD, the readout of the CCD can be destructive or not. CCDs can be very effective for low light sources. We worry about counting individual photons, and measure noise levels in electrons. >(what I'm getting at) can I take my Panasonic (ala digiview) camera and >optically couple it to my C8 and get images? Sure, why not? It wouldn't be your first choice, but you can experiment without throwing a lot of money around needlessly. Have fun! Now for a question of my own. I want to be able to remotely view the images off a video source in near-real-time. There is a video camera that passively monitors the field of view of the telescope. I would like to feed this signal into an Amiga and digitize the image. The image would then be made available throughout the network over ethernet. It's the first step toward remote observing. (Life is miserable at nearly 3 miles above sea level.) So... * What is a good way to monitor a video signal and convert it to a computer-usable format? * How about formats for feeding images to workstations? Bandwidth, update rate, and resolution all need to be considered. * Data will not be saved, but (ideally) needs to be accessible by any machine on the network that would like to check on this. (I'll do the X windows programming, plus Amiga stuff if needed.) I have some ideas, but I welcome all input. Thanks. -- Jim Wright jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.
hoover@math4.uni-bielefeld.de (Uwe Sch"urkamp) (09/17/90)
Dear Jim, I would refer you to one article in "Astronomy Magazine" in which a guy describes how he connect a ccd to a computer (some clone, I believe) and saved the processed images on disk. If you have not heard of this article, drop us a line, and I'll flip through the back issues and find out the date. Cheers, hoover --------------------------------------------------------------------------- hoover (Uwe Sch"urkamp) "our obligation is to survive and flourish, hoover@math4.uni-bielefeld.de not just to ourselves, but to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." --- Carl Sagan, `Cosmos' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------