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From: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga, CCD, astronomy image-processing
Message-ID: <6314@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 24 Aug 90 15:45:22 GMT
References: <28303@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Organization: UCO/Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz
Lines: 41

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 	|