Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!ames!eos!shelby!agate!saturn!helios!terry
From: terry@helios (Terry Ricketts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amigas in Astronomy (was Re: C-A Adverts. in magazines)
Message-ID: <7764@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 15:29:54 GMT
References: <16526@louie.udel.EDU> <742@solaria.csun.edu> <25125@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <25127@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz;  UCO/Lick Observatory
Lines: 35

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amigas in Astronomy (was Re: C-A Adverts. in magazines)
Summary: A500 + live
Expires: 
References: <16526@louie.udel.EDU> <742@solaria.csun.edu> <25125@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <25127@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: Terry Ricketts
Reply-To: terry@helios.ucsc.edu (Terry Ricketts)
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz;  UCO/Lick Observatory
Keywords: Astronomy

	The astronomer in question is Dr. Dave Rank of our institution. I am
the one responsible for setting up the system for him. We used an A500 with one
of the early versions of Live. We had to modify Live to work with the 500 and
to have more levels of grey. Dr Rank wrote a program in Basic which he compiled
to report on the 'seeing' around a particular star and also to report on the
tracking of the telescope. One of the important findings the system has given 
us is a report on the poor focusing that we had had on the telescope. No one 
had noticed it before. The program has been running at the 120" telescope
for quite a while now and has pointed out several porblems in the automatic
tracking system that are now being corrected. A similar system was built to
fly out of NASA Ames on the flying observatory. He uses it to correct the
tracking of the telescope. 
	The Pet in question was used for many years as a smart terminal for
the Telescope Controller for both the 120" and 40" telescopes. In the past
few months it has been replaced by a background process running in the data
taking computer in the control room (at present a VME system from ISI).
	If anyone has any questions about the setup or software one of us
can try to answer them (I hope).

Terry Ricketts
Senior Development Engineer
Lick Observatory Electronics Lab
University Of California, Santa Cruz