[Gllug] Digital Cameras

[Nix]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, John Hearns uttered the following:
> I've never done amateur astronomy in my life, but the magazine nowadays
> has articles where it is common to use CCD cameras, and there are
> 'point and shoot' telescopes which guide themselves to a chosen object
> via a computer interface (sorry - there is a term for this) and even

`Go to'.

Some people think it's wonderful, some people that it's the devil's
invention, some people just think it's a useful tool if the clouds are
closing in (as they always are in .uk of course) and you just want to
see that d*mn open cluster before you're forced to the pub^W^W^Windoors.

> I guess Linux must be big in this field.

Um, this is embedded hardware on the scopes; if an OS is involved at all
it'll be something like ecos at most.

> Anyway, can't afford the scope or the CCD,
> but I idly wonder whether or not it would be possible to gut a
> cheapo digital camera (say like the Jam Cam) to make an telescope
> camera?

It'd almost certainly work if you used long exposure times: this is the
age-old method of using cameras with scopes, as old as photography :) a
good scope can even auto-slew to compensate for the earth's rotation
(although the oldies will turn up their noses at this).

Of course modern astronomy uses CCDs exclusively but that's because
CCD's're much more precise and potentially much better at low exposures
than normal film, and also because the CCD data can hit computers for
analysis at once, with none of this physical loss-inducing faffing about
you had to do with film.

(And for many other reasons, too. CCDs are to film as a surgeon's
scalpel is to a flint axe: the flint axe may be fine but you've never
got as much *control*... and we're good with semiconductors these days.)


--- oops, you said you can't afford it. Oh well.

-- 
`What happened?'
                 `Nick shipped buggy code!'
                                             `Oh, no dinner for him...'

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug