Re: "ATM demise" via CCD?? and more!

[Mel Bartels <mbartels@efn.org>]

Did anyone notice that Gary authored more than one major article in Sky and
Telescope?  An auspicious month!

Did anyone also notice that in S&T the double star observer likes to use
magnifications of 140x per inch of aperture?  I continue to advocate extreme
magnifications in special circumstances - my 20" really performs when seeing
allows powers of 1000x to 2000x.

Finally, I don't like it when someone posts too much all of a sudden - so I
apologize for those of you getting tired of reading my posts.  I keep promising
myself to lay off for a bit, but I can't resist!  Too many cloudy nights I
fear.  So pray for some clear skies here in Oregon - right now we are
experiencing record floods.

>>> I am sure that the avid CCDer enjoys knowing that he's captured the image
'right now', using 'that scope'.  But I can go online & retrieve images of
celestial objects taken by major observatory telescopes, and perform the same
visual inspection of the image; and also the same scientific analysis, excepting
the importance of time of exposure. <<<

Peter, for me, the thrill of imaging is knowing that I took the image.  There is
no diminishment of thrill even when I go back and work with images years old.
The realtime aspect is not that important to me.

The allure of being able to do observing in light polluted skies, the allure of
color, the allure of seeing stuff that is difficult even for gigantic scopes, I
think will continue to propel CCD imaging to the forefront.  Don't think I am
abandoning visual - Swayze and I have embarked on a crazy project to push the
visual envelope to new amateur levels.  But I definitely feel in my heart that
this is a last gasp - ala the demise of the steam engine.

But if CCD imaging continues to grow in popularity, then I think we need to
redesign our telescopes from the ground up.  Whereas with visual the aperture
and quality and atmosphere are most important, with CCDs, the detector is
paramount.  So instead of thinking, "What is the aperture?", one thinks, "What
is the chip?"  What we hang off the chip optically and computationally to
display and store the image, is secondary, or downstream, if you will.  So we
need to think more of drives and pointing ability to unseeable objects and we
need to think more of filters and extracting that low level signal from the
heavens, and operating remotely from more advantagous skies.

>>> Finally, I personally do not see the construction of electronic equipment in
the same light as working with metal, wood, and glass; electronics are
without appeal to me, but that is even more subjective & personal. <<<

I know you appreciate fine instrumentation - hopefully these CCD optimized
systems will attract in ways yet unseen <smile>.  How do you feel about finely
crafted software?

Visually, though a terrible simplification, when working deep sky, one primarily
thinks of 'piling on aperture'.  The large transportable Dobsonian to dark skies
is a very specialized instrument, the product of years of practical evolution.

I wonder what our telescopes will look like after years of practical evolution
of CCD detectors?

--
Clear skies, Mel Bartels
http://www.efn.org/~mbartels