johnf@dark.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Flanagan) (06/01/89)
In article <742@solaria.csun.edu> ecphssrw@io.csun.edu (Stephen Walton) writes: > ...the A1000 is being used >for one scientific instrument of many at Palomar. A couple of weeks ago I tagged along on an observing run at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. In the control room of the 120" telescope I saw an A500 hooked up to a video digitizer. As I recall, I was told that one of the professors from U.C. Santa Cruz (which operates the telescope) was trying to use it to measure the point-spread function of guide stars, as an aid to pointing. The night I was there it was being used to while away the hours during exposures -- their game collection was fairly impressive. john John Flanagan Space Sciences Laboratory johnf@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu University of California, Berkeley (...!ucbvax!sag4.ssl!johnf) Berkeley, CA 94720 (415) 642-7635
johnf@dark.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Flanagan) (06/01/89)
In article <25125@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> I wrote: >I was told that one of the professors from U.C. Santa Cruz (which operates >the telescope) was trying to use it to measure the point-spread function >of guide stars, as an aid to pointing. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I just remembered that the purpose was to measure the clarity of the atmosphere (known as the "seeing"). Incidentally, there was also an old PET in the room, which was used until recently to control the telescope guidance motors. john John Flanagan Space Sciences Laboratory johnf@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu University of California, Berkeley (...!ucbvax!sag4.ssl!johnf) Berkeley, CA 94720 (415) 642-7635
terry@helios (Terry Ricketts) (06/01/89)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amigas in Astronomy (was Re: C-A Adverts. in magazines) Summary: A500 + live Expires: References: <16526@louie.udel.EDU> <742@solaria.csun.edu> <25125@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <25127@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: Terry Ricketts Reply-To: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; UCO/Lick Observatory Keywords: Astronomy The astronomer in question is Dr. Dave Rank of our institution. I am the one responsible for setting up the system for him. We used an A500 with one of the early versions of Live. We had to modify Live to work with the 500 and to have more levels of grey. Dr Rank wrote a program in Basic which he compiled to report on the 'seeing' around a particular star and also to report on the tracking of the telescope. One of the important findings the system has given us is a report on the poor focusing that we had had on the telescope. No one had noticed it before. The program has been running at the 120" telescope for quite a while now and has pointed out several porblems in the automatic tracking system that are now being corrected. A similar system was built to fly out of NASA Ames on the flying observatory. He uses it to correct the tracking of the telescope. The Pet in question was used for many years as a smart terminal for the Telescope Controller for both the 120" and 40" telescopes. In the past few months it has been replaced by a background process running in the data taking computer in the control room (at present a VME system from ISI). If anyone has any questions about the setup or software one of us can try to answer them (I hope). Terry Ricketts Senior Development Engineer Lick Observatory Electronics Lab University Of California, Santa Cruz