[sac-board] SAC Meeting Minutes: 2010/08/20
- From: Paul Dickson <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: SAC-Board <sac-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:15:43 -0700
Dick Harshaw started the meeting at 1931. There were two guests attending, Bob
and Ron.
Steve Dodder, the chair of the novice group, had cards available for people to
contact him. He is also the coordinator of the north rim part of the Grand
Canyon Star Party. Reservations for 2011 need to be made starting now. Last
year, the cabins were all booked by November. He also reminded us of the 50/50
raffle, one ticket for $1, six tickets for $5.
A.J. Crayon told us there would be a 2011 All-Arizona Messier Marathon, but the
location has not been decided at this time. The marathon will be Saturday,
April 2, the Saturday nearest the new moon.
Dick Harshaw reminded us of our upcoming observing dates. September sessions
are at Cherry Road site and the October sessions are the Antennae site.
Regular star parties are 9/4 and 10/2, and Dark of the Moon sessions are 9/11
and 10/9.
The All-Arizona Star Party will be at he Antennae site on November 5-7.
We now have a permits to use land for sites in the BLM Yuma district. Dick
Harshaw has the permit as a PDF file that he can E-mail upon request. One
person in any group (2 or more people) must have the permit with them. At his
time, only the Antennae site is known to be in the Yuma district of the BLM.
The break started at 1950. We had 36 people attending.
After the lengthy break (2019), Tom Polakis introduced astro-imager, Bob
Birket, who showed us some of his images and the software processing needed to
get them.
Software covered were:
PemPro - Which allowed periodic error in the telescope guiding system to be
managed and has a polar alignment wizard.
CCDNavigator - Which produces a list of sky targets for the time of the year.
CCDInspector - Allows sorting of images of an object, looking at the Full Wave
Half Mask (FWHM). This allows finding of the best images automatically. The
program also provides real-time support for columnation.
FocusxMax - Creates a V Curve to automate focusing of the telescope.
CCDCalculator - Assists with calculating the plate scale of the telescope and
camera system.
Sky Flats Assist - assists with getting flat fields for the CCD.
CCDStacks - Bob walked us through using this program, applying flat, dark and
bias frames; deblooming; aligning; normalizing; rejecting bad pixels. The
result was an image for the luminance and color channels.
Photoshop - This allow the images to be combined, using the luminance as a
filter for the colors.
Bob referred to several books, the out of print The New CCD Astronomy by Ron
Wodaski and Handbook of Astronomical Imaging for a mathematical basis. Adam
Block's website (http://www.caelumobservatory.com/) is also a good resource,
including the DVDs provided there.
The meeting ended at 2132.
-Paul Dickson
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