cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gordon Hlavenka) (07/11/90)
How about this for poor Hubble: Find a suitable starfield, then take a time exposure while sweeping the telescope through some arc greater than its field of view. By doing this twice, with the sweeps 90 degrees displaced from each other, we would have essentially a grid of what _should_ be straight lines. Of course, the lines wouldn't be straight, due to the lens problem. But the data collected would allow the image processing folks to fully characterize the aberration. My guess would be that if the flaw is repeatable and measurable there should be little difficulty processing it out of the images. Corrective lens in the camera? Leave it to some programmer to recommend a hardware solution! If they can't get a ten foot mirror right, what makes anyone think they can get a two inch (or whatever) lens right? ----------------------------------------------------------- Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us Disclaimer: He's sleeping, he doesn't know what he's saying
charlie@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Charlie Channel) (07/13/90)
In article <269a39a1-13esci.space.shuttle@vpnet.chi.il.us> cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gordon Hlavenka) writes: > >Corrective lens in the camera? Leave it to some programmer to recommend a >hardware solution! If they can't get a ten foot mirror right, what makes >anyone think they can get a two inch (or whatever) lens right? >----------------------------------------------------------- >Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us If I may take a moment to be somewhat philosophical about this matter, it seems to me that it must be a very great disappointing for those who have put so much time, energy and life (not to mention money) into making the thing work. I feel that those in science may, on occasion, forget that life is an imperfect science. Put another way, applied science is artistically using technology. And for the stuff to work, an artist is necessary. The real scientific genius is the the person with knowledge, who knows how to "fudge" in a way that (1) maintains the integrity of the "science" being used and (2) achieves the desired result. Short of that, what you need is a technician who remembers that a field replacable unit may be more expensive, but at least nothing need be known about whatever it is that's being replaced. The technician's job is to convince management that they might consider that in design. Otherwise, give management the screw driver and let 'em go for it. Charlie