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From: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: summary re: amiga, ccd, astronomy image-processing
Message-ID: <6604@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 90 16:59:56 GMT
References: <28827@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <jwright.652282081@catfish> <992@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Organization: UCO/Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz
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In article <992@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> U3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo) writes:

.... stuff deleted....

>Sorry, but I'm genuinely confused. Wasn't this thread basically trying to
>determine if Amigas are being/could be used for jobs currently performed
>by Macintoshes/IBM clones in this area?
>
>I can't (yet, perhaps if at all) see that those PCs are ``that much'' better
>equipped for the apparently CPU intensive tasks you outline. 
>
>At any rate I've been reading this thread to find out more specifics as to
>why that _may_ be so. If it is then the problems could be addressed and it
>might even interest developers into trying to develop Amiga solutions for
>this area. If we're talking Cray size problems here then we've left the
>original thread IMHO.
>
>JW> This is a far cry from Lick, Palomar, Keck, CFHT, et. al.  I don't know,
>JW> there just might be a market for an off-the-shelf computerized home
>JW> observatory.  Could be fun.  A bit of competition for Distant Suns. :-)
>
>This I would like to see. :-)

    In my original posting I tried to show several ways we are presently using
Amigas in professional astronomy. I have to agree with Jim Wright though that
trying to use Ami to process CCD images is using the wrong tool, unless you
are working with small images (such as you might get from a camcorder). The
CCD controller we are presently working on will be producing images that
consume 32M of memory per picture. We are finding that the Ethernet is not
fast enough and are having to go with FDDI and very fast Sparc stations. As
much as I like Ami there are some things it is not suited for, and this is one
of them. Once the data is processed and we have a standard video image we can
use Ami for some other functions. But it is not capable (yet) of handling that
much data in any reasonable time.


| 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 	|