[Laser] Astronomy frame stacking software

[Art]

I'm not sure most of us can use the benefit of an expended field of 
view on receive, but it would certainly be useful in some cases.

I'd love to be able to go to a hilltop, aim my receiver in the 
general direction of my qso partner and be assured that I didn't have 
to worry about aiming the receiver! But, these ccd's need serious 
cooling to make them work with long term averaging. The good ones aren't cheap.

I'd rather cool my photodiode than to attempt to cool a CCD unit. I'm 
just not sure most amateurs would find them useful.

Art


At 08:59 PM 1/22/2007, you wrote:
>Glen:
>
> >From your reply:
>
> > No sound card, but you do have to build up a CCD detector, including its
>control circuitry - not a trivial task.
>
>I concur it is no trivial task, but why build your own CCD detector?  The
>units readily available to amateur astronomers would perform quite well for
>the task at a price that is within the reach of hobbyists.  The
>predictability of the performance may be the biggest advantage to the
>homebrewer.
>
> >
> > You only need one CCD detector that way. These days, CCDs  are usually in
>focal plane arrays. That can be used for pointing the receiver array if the
>receiver optics create a real image of the transmitter. The computer then
>needs only to locate the pixel that is under the image of the transmitter.
>Again, non-trivial control circuitry for the CCD and some moderately
>complicated software to use it.
> >
>
>Again, I question the advantage of a single detector.  ( This next probably
>sounds like a put-down, but I only intend to show the tremendous difference
>in what are standards of acceptable performance, as dirived from very
>different goals, of the two hobbies. )  From what I have seen of the
>description of the optics being used, most experimenters have no clue how
>far or in what direction their units are out of focus.  The optical tube
>assemblies probably would have so much wobble that small detectors cannot
>hold the target if they were in crisp focus.  ( I am sure that even a very
>kind amateur astronomer would consider our optical devices and mounts to be
>out of the stone age. ) One of the benefits of the readily available staking
>software is that it will compensate for the jiggle of the image in the frame
>so that you do not have to hold the target on the same pixel.
>
>Some targets may be single pixel, but there may be good reasons to use a
>difuse target and average out the whole field.  And for either target you
>might get a very pleasant surprise to find that an image may be easier to
>aquire and once focused, have a greatly improved SNR.
>
>
>James
>N5GUI
>
>
>
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