[sac-board] Re: SAC Meeting Minutes: 2010/08/20
- From: "AJ Crayon" <acrayon@xxxxxxx>
- To: <sac-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:55:51 -0700
Paul, re - AAMM. You might add that the April 2nd date was selected as it
is closer to the prime observing dates in late March.
AJ Crayon
Phoenix, AZ
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Dickson" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "SAC-Board" <sac-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2010 7:15 AM
Subject: [sac-board] SAC Meeting Minutes: 2010/08/20
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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