Mark wrote:
> I do agree, especially about Ray, and others like Crisp. They push the art
> forward through their enthusiasm, technical expertise and
> experimentation.
Call me a Geek, but I really get excited about this stuff and especially
seeing the limit pushed outward. Yesterday I was informed of a new (about 2
- 3 year old ) sensor technology that may possibility push the limit. The
company Foveon has developed a CMOS RGB stacked sensor array sensor. Instead
of a side-by-side (RGB or CYM) colors sensor this company uses the fact that
different wavelength of light will penetrate silicon to different depths. So
3-d RGB stacked sensor can achieve higher resolution and true color without
the artifacts associated with conventional color sensor design. Now using
such a sensor in combination with broad and narrow band pass filters and
some post processing, imagine what can be done?
I called the company FOVEON today to get more information and to see if
there was opportunity to do telescope camera development. It seems that I am
to late as the big name companies already have development projects in
progress.While CMOS offers some engineering opportunities over CCD sensor
technology we may be seeing some new products on the horizon soon.
Knowing TAC is a visual forum we (Meifong and I) find imaging no conflict of
interest with our observing program. We are basically visual observers (and
currently looking for the "big, bigger, biggest dob" upgrade). Nothing can
replace the feeling of capturing thousands and millions of year old photons
with biological sensors. We go to the camera when we want to shoot something
to gain more insight about an object. Granted I can go on the web and find
much better images then I can produce, but there is a certain satisfaction
about being able to do it yourself. My major frustration with imaging is not
having a permanent mount setup so that I can go to same part of the sky and
collect data in a periodic fashion in the hope of seeing a new event.
Nick