Instrumentation and Equipment

Hi all--

Since there's no other group or committee assigned to working on manuals, that responsibility falls to the Equipment and Instrumentation Section. The current manual dates to 2014, and it's very good. But as we all know, CMOS cameras and new filter types are changing the field of photometry. The manual needs updating.

I'm looking it to acquiring some photometric filters. I'm interested in the interference type since I live on the west coast of Canada where we have a fair bit of moisture most of the time. I have a Schuler V from a number of years ago and it has the characteristic hygroscopic crusting that happens with the colour glass filters. 

When examining the response curves of the Bessell V and B of the Chroma brand I can see that the peaks of the curves are relatively flat for their range as opposed to the more gaussian "pointy" look of the traditional coloured glass filters.

 I have recently started using an ASI 183MM Pro CMOS camera for photometry. I started off using the ZWO ASIIMG software for image capture. However on checking the times recorded in the DATE-OBS field of the FITS header, as far as I can see, these  record the end time of the exposure when they should record the start.  If anyone is using this software,  it might be worth checking that the information in the DATE-OBS field is what they are expecting it to be. I have now switched to SIPS which seems to be fine. 

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Hello photometrists--

We're doing a survey to find how many observers are currently looking for either Johnson/Cousin or Sloan photometric filters. If you have recently ordered and/or received filters, what did order and how long did it take to receive them?

Hello,

Hello All,

A colleague of mine, Bhavesh Rajpoot,  has helped write a set of tools for simulating telescope setups. It will help you estimate things like resolution power and limiting magnitude for a new potential setup along with many other things. They are looking for people to try it out and give feedback, so if this interests you, you can find the program  and a more detailed description here:

https://github.com/Bhavesh012/TCalc

Thanks,

Bert Pablo
Staff Astronomer AAVSO

What ISO speed would you recommend for doing photometry during a full moon or even if you change the ISO speed based on sky brightness at all?

Hello! I'm trying to decide on an on-axis guider vs. guide scope for my new setup.

    For those running a scope remotely or unattended, how often do you lack a guide star using an on-axis guider? I won't be using a rotator since that creates lots of problems with flat fields.

    I use SGPro to acquire images. When the guide star is lost, the program aborts till the time limit of the observation is reached and then the routine goes to the next target. Thank you and best regards.

Mike

I'm working through the Basic CCD Testing section 8.2 of Richard's Image Processing book, applying the tests to my Canon Rebel T5.

I'm thinking that I have to add some wrinkles to the testing:
   - separate test series for different ISO's
   - Debayer the test images and do each color separately 

Other things I should look out for?

One thing I see with a quick test is that the darks look just like the bias shots... 
I'm wondering if the Canon is doing some tricks for me that I need to understand.

I received investment information for Optical Structures. They seem to be looking for pre-IPO investors with a goal of doing an IPO within 24 months.

While interesting, I have no idea how that relates to how they will continue, or not, to invest in new products such as photometric filters.

If anyone wishes the documents, I can email them to you.

Peter