Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!hale!whinery From: whinery@hale.ifa.hawaii.edu (Alan Whinery) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: summary re: amiga, ccd, astronomy image-processing Summary: PCs in Infrared Astronomy Keywords: image processing, amiga, astronomy, infrared Message-ID: <9216@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: 5 Sep 90 19:04:57 GMT References: <28827@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <992@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> Sender: news@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Distribution: comp.sys.amiga Organization: Institute For Astronomy, Hawaii Lines: 46 In article someone (probably jwright) writes: > >Microcomputers are not the driving force for image acquisition or image >reduction at any of the big sites that I know of. When you start dropping >names like Lick and Palomar, this is what I think of. Which is not to say >that micros don't play a role. I'm trying to get a few Amigas in here. Some stuff that seems at least indirectly relevant to this thread: Here at the Institute, we are currently developing several systems for _infrared_ image acquisition/processing which are 80386-PC based. The big difference between IR and visible-light instruments is that the IR CCD arrays are typically 256 X 256, whereas the visible-light arrays are more like 2048 X 2048. The raw image size of the visible light images still gives the engineers a tendency towards using the number-crunching engines the VAX/SUN/IBM ilk, whereas we infrared astro types are clearly PC-based. The systems that will be developed here will be used throughout the observatories on the mainland, as well as at our beloved next door neighbor, CFHT. (Think of it ... during installation, I might even meet jwright, IN PERSON!) :>). I am a hopeless Amiga-ite. One of our astronomers is using the Amiga in some very specialized and important image-processing work. But the sad fact is that the instruments we develop are heavily dependent on an AT type bus, a fact that is unlikely to change, since we have to consider the compatibility of the hardware with other observatories that will use it -- there are an awful lot of programmers and engineers who already know the PC architecture like the back of their hands, and they would be very hard to convert, unless you had some REALLY great perks to offer for using an Amiga. I think that if Amiga is going to get a foot in the door in the scientific community in a BIG way, it will depend much on the A3000/UNIX/Sun/X-window compatibility issue to come. I offer these notes to acknowledge what seems to be so. Now, given the climate, how do we proliferate the Amiga to every desktop? Macintosh? Bah. We use no Macs. Our publishing office, they use Macs. ============================================================================== D. A. Whinery, Electronics Div., UHIfA, IRTF, PDQ, RSVP. (whinery@hale.ifa.hawaii.edu) ==============================================================================