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(meteorobs) Lew's video meteor system
Lew wrote:
> One of our local astronomy clubs is considering investing in a video
>system and
> image intensifier...
You have gotten some good comments back on trade offs in limiting magnitude
and field of view, but there are some other lens parameters one must be
wary of. The first is the f-stop on the lens you plan to get. You want to
have the fastest possible lens you can afford for a given field of view.
The lens should also be well corrected so that the image is not severly
distorted in the corners of the image. Both features come with a price tag
but shopping around used camera stores sometimes turns up a decent buy.
What are the details on the rest of the imaging system? Is the intensifier
tube 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation (big difference in noise characteristics).
Can you adjust the intensifier gain to deal with different background
illumination (dark skies, light pollution, bright moon conditions)? Are you
getting a low light black/white CCD? Is the CCD output frame rate NTSC or
is it an integrating camera (Lew is in the USA for those PAL afficiondos).
If frame rate how do you plan to get the information off tape, that is,
what computer system/frame grabber/software configuration you plan to use
or are you just screening the video on a monitor?
These are just a few questions one might inquire into before buying a
system. Both myself and Sirko have written some articles on video meteor
issues in back iussues of WGN that you may want to peruse. If you have any
questions just drop me a line.
Pete Gural
pgural@trg1.saic.com
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