Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!catfish!jwright From: jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu (Jim Wright) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: amiga, ccd, astronomy image-processing Message-ID: Date: 16 Sep 90 23:45:59 GMT References: <1160@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> <28827@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <992@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <28045@swrinde.nde.swri.edu> <15264@shlump.nac.dec.com> Sender: news@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Lines: 41 guineau@wjg.enet.dec.com (W. John Guineau) writes: >I haven't been following this thread so this may have already been answered. >I was under the impression that CCD's were not 'cumulative' light collectors >and so are useless for dim things like deep sky. I'm no CCD expert, but... They are cumulative. And depending on the electronics on the CCD, the readout of the CCD can be destructive or not. CCDs can be very effective for low light sources. We worry about counting individual photons, and measure noise levels in electrons. >(what I'm getting at) can I take my Panasonic (ala digiview) camera and >optically couple it to my C8 and get images? Sure, why not? It wouldn't be your first choice, but you can experiment without throwing a lot of money around needlessly. Have fun! Now for a question of my own. I want to be able to remotely view the images off a video source in near-real-time. There is a video camera that passively monitors the field of view of the telescope. I would like to feed this signal into an Amiga and digitize the image. The image would then be made available throughout the network over ethernet. It's the first step toward remote observing. (Life is miserable at nearly 3 miles above sea level.) So... * What is a good way to monitor a video signal and convert it to a computer-usable format? * How about formats for feeding images to workstations? Bandwidth, update rate, and resolution all need to be considered. * Data will not be saved, but (ideally) needs to be accessible by any machine on the network that would like to check on this. (I'll do the X windows programming, plus Amiga stuff if needed.) I have some ideas, but I welcome all input. Thanks. -- Jim Wright jwright@cfht.hawaii.edu Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.