[Lvas] Palomar Mountain Observatory

[Martin Suñer Hilario]

[>Reading through Dr. Law's doctorial thesis, he states that for the
2.5meter telescope that he was using, 30 frames per second was
optimum.  My
question is, how many frames per second does the Mallincam take?

The Mallincam with do "Live" video at 30 FPS, but at that rate it can't
capture many photons.  This is what the other integration times are for:

7,14,28 or 56 seconds

The CCD is capturing for these times, then refreshing and throwing the
accumulated photons away and starting over, all the while maintaining
the most current image in a video buffer for display on a TV like device.

Doug P]

Also, mallincam integration effectively postprocesses/combines 128 to 3584
frames (refreshing the analog signal from 2.1 up to ~56 seconds) at 30FPS.
In my interpretation, it's like an interline CCD chip (like the most of the
sony ones) that takes 1/60th second frames (alternately on every other line
so at 30FPS)...then stacks and enhances the signal (gain or histogram or
whatever) of those frames with the onboard cpu. A very nearly automatic
video camera for "assisted visual astronomy" with this incorporated CPU. Now
I want Rock Mallin to reveal to us how that "hyper" circuit works.

If only the mallincam processor had a program called Registax4 so we don't
get those annoying star trails at 28sec. (lol? at this possible future
upgrade)

More articles to share/sources:

Yahoo Groups Discussion about How the Mallincam Works (this is where i
learned how the camera worked in the first place, good if you haven't seen
it already):
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mallincam/message/4213

Interline CCDs...not very relevant but fun to look at:
http://www.roperscientific.de/tinterline.html

On a side note, that Lucky Imager to me is analogous to a SBIG AO-7
accessory with a video camera and Meade's DSI Pro Autostar Suite (the one
that does that image processing thing) program. Perhaps Dr. Law at
Cambridge/Palomar was inspired by what we do in amateur astronomy such as
image stacking for planets and DSOs in Maxim DL and Autostar Suite.


Phil, thank you for your directions to our meeting place - they saved me a
lot of time. I looked at SLOOH's webpage and I think that using it is
definitely real astronomy. After all, scientists would lobby for time and
control the Hubble Space Telescope from their astrophysical research
"armchairs" so to speak. Maybe I can sneak a peek with you guys too.

How do you like the Canary Islands location - and would you happen to have a
problem with frequent cloud cover around the European Atlantic Ocean?

Sidenote: Not detracting anything at all from traditional amateur visual
astronomy, I love to pan around and observe with eyepieces without the aid
of electronics or computers just as well. It is equally enjoying to me to
have my own eyes process/stack/enhance the light from distant objects in the
heavens above with the aid of optical technology.

martin


On Jan 3, 2008 12:28 PM, Douglas Phillipson <phillipd at oem.doe.gov> wrote:

> Phillip Krumpos wrote:
> > Reading through Dr. Law's doctorial thesis, he states that for the 2.5meter telescope that he was using, 30 frames per second was optimum.  My
> question is, how many frames per second does the Mallincam take?
> >
> The Mallincam with do "Live" video at 30 FPS, but at that rate it can't
> capture many photons.  This is what the other integration times are for:
>
> 7,14,28 or 56 seconds
>
> The CCD is capturing for these times, then refreshing and throwing the
> accumulated photons away and starting over, all the while maintaining
> the most current image in a video buffer for display on a TV like device.
>
> Doug P
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via the Lvas mailing list Lvas at lvlug.org
> Set options or unsubscribe at http://lvlug.org/mailman/listinfo/lvas
>
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