Astronomy
A variety of "open" tools for optical and radio astronomy.
People in astronomy have been sharing electronics information for a long time.
Some people use a motor driver to point the telescope in the right location.
cooling
Both radio and optical astronomy seems to work better when the receiver is cold.
- A Temperature Controlled Head Amplifier for 408MHz Radio Astronomy[1]
- Peltier Cooler for DSLR. A temperature reduction of 12 'C apparently reduces the CCD dark current by a factor of 4.[2]
- [3]
- This Web Cam Autoguiding thread also mentions Peltier cooling[4]
- "Noise Experiment #5: Peltier Cooler" describes more or les directly bolting a Peltier to the bottom of a DSLR camera.[5]
- "DSLR Peltier Coolbox"[6]
- "Is it more efficient to stack two Peltier modules or to set them side by side?"[7]
- "Thermistor control of peltier voltage with Arduino (for DSLR chill box project)"[8]
astronomy wiki
Someone over at the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today forum are considering using a wiki for FAQs and "a small library of the "Greatest Hits"".
Should I jump in and recommend one of the below astronomy wiki? I've been using wiki so long that I am a little disconcerted when a discussion forum has rules heavily discouraging editing even one's own posts, disparaging such edits as "revisionism". (But perhaps those people don't know about the "history" feature of most wiki). --DavidCary 22:55, 20 September 2007 (PDT)
astronomy wiki
- University of Washington Astronomy Department wiki
- the Unofficial BOINC Wiki: you can participate in scientific research
- Green Bank national radio astronomy observatory wiki
- RadioNet wiki: advanced radio astronomy
- ASTR 535: Radio Astronomy Instrumentation wiki
- Wikibooks:Astronomy
- GNU Radio wiki: discusses software-defined radio (SDR). One application is radio astronomy
- "Indoor Astronomy Wiki" http://indoorastronomy.com/
- the Stellar Visions wiki
- Slackerpedia Galactica, the free astronomy encyclopedia -- now with a sense of humor!
further reading
- "Primeval Structure Telescope"
- http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/
- "massive amateur telescope array"
- "Focal plane arrays: radio astronomy enters the CCD area" by J.G. Bij de Vaate, M.V. Ivashina
- "Computer Operated Telescopes" has some open source (GPL) software.
