All: I had the pleasure of visiting the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) base yesterday with Jim Fowler to take a look at the AMBER detector and its electronics. The electronics and detector combined are worth ~1 million dollars and is by far one of the most hi-tech systems you can find. Jim Fowler has already had 1.5 days training with the detector and there are plans for another 1.5 days training at WSMR once the dewer has been created and returned. This may occur in late October/early November and I myself will try to attend. Jim and I tinkered with the detector quite a bit. I was introduced to the design of the detector and electronics. Not to go into too much detail, I will describe what I can below: The detector consists of a 512x512 array of pixels which are read-out using a multiplexer rather than your typical shift-register (bucket-brigade). This means that individual pixels can be read/omitted and info. on each pixel is recorded within the electronics in order to remove pixel-to-pixel variations later on. Pixels are read in groups of 4 (each pixel traveling down one of 4 channels) into what is referred to as the "Pro-View" data acquisition system. The data is converted (A/D) and if desired, non-uniformity corrections, intensity transformations, and summations can occur within this circuit board. In short, by placing a hot and cold source in front of the detector for calibration frames, the electronics will take care of flat-fielding and bias levels. Current plans are for WSMR to provide an adjustable blackbody source to be used for these calibrations. Data frames are placed in a display bus and carried to a storage area and then to a video board. This video board is QUITE flexible and can manipulate the color monitor display of your data without affecting the acquisition of your data (it is an entirely separate entity). There are both manual and automated settings which you can choose to change gains and offsets. In other words, you will see a really NEAT color representation of your data on the screen and can change things to see low brightness details. VERY FANCY! Note: manipulating the screen output has no bearing on the stored data. The storage area will consist of removable Gigabyte-sized disks (which are currently being obtained). The amount of data per pixel is 2 bytes per pixel. Depending on the size of the array which you will be accessing, the frame rate can go from 800 frames/sec (128x128 max) to 70-78 frames/sec (512x512 max rate). Therefore, we are talking about acquiring Gigabytes of data over the span of a night or 1 minute, depending on your exposure times and the ability to sum data in the Proview Acquisition board. Do not fret. More details will come later on. Data storage will be an issue though, and Jim Fowler will be looking into this. Apparently the WSMR people will store their data on removable Gigabyte disks. All of their data, once it hits the disk, is "classified". We will therefore have to obtain disks which are similar to the ones the WSMR people will be using. Thought will have to be put in as to how much disk space we will need and who will pay for the disks. The raw images will be in byte array format, possibly with some basic header information (time,alt,az.). This has to be looked into in more detail and good observation notes will be a MUST with this detector. Finally, considerations must be made concerning the utilization of this instrument for astronomical purposes. It is unclear at which position at the rear of the 3.5 meter this camera will be placed. The WSMR people do not need to worry about sidereal rates or field rotation, however WE DO. It is hoped that whatever position is chosen for the WSMR camera, that it is done so that astronomical obsv. will be possible. With the amount of data that is going to be obtained using this instrument, it would be cumbersome to have to worry about field rotation for the hundreds of frames you have spanning a few hours of the night. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_______________NOTE_________________________!!!!!!!!!!!! What is needed right now is input from the ARC astro. community concerning the AMBER detector and what is going to be needed in order for it to be used for astronomy. I have already mentioned data storage as well as tracking and field rotation potential problems, and I am sure there are quite a few more things that need to be addressed. Jim Fowler and I will be working on these dilemmas together, however we would appreciate any comments/concerns you might have regarding this detector. Please FEEL FREE to contact me or email the AMBER board apo35-amber@astro.princeton.edu with any comments. With some luck and support we will be able to have the ability to use this MARVELOUS AMBER setup to do some great science. The images which Jim and I made of buildings, mountains, people smoking cigarettes were amazing, and done with relative ease. The possibilities of using this detector for astronomical purposes should be taken VERY seriously. Please support this detector if you have the slightest interest in using it, Christopher Garasi APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 2 in the apo35-amber archive. You can find APO the archive in /u/strauss/apo/mailer/apo35-amber on astro.princeton.edu APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-amber@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO