Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents

High-Speed Camera System Update (1Sep95)
(from NSO, NOAO Newsletter No. 43, September 1995)

The high-speed camera system uses off-the-shelf parts, a SPARC 20, and
a Thomson 1K x 1K camera. The system is ready for local use to finish
testing the system. The system is currently used at the Vacuum Tower
Telescope, but it can easily be moved to the Evans Solar Facility.

The camera base frame rate is 5 frames per second. The software
windows and bins the image, chooses the best image from a number of
images at 5 frames per second, averages images at 4 frames per second,
writes 2 frames per second to disk, and writes 1 frame in 4 seconds to
tape. The camera S/N is 500:1, and the A-D converter is 10 bits. The
exposure time can be set as short as 6 milliseconds, and incremented
in milliseconds.

The user interfaces are shell script programs, graphical user
interface, IDL, and remote control by a network interface. The
software is modular and allows for additional software modules for
instrument control. This is useful for a stand-alone instrument and
data acquisition configuration, such as taking a packaged instrument
to another site or an eclipse. An external trigger allows the system
to be synched to other experiments as well. External trigger mode
allows the camera system to be synched to Universal Time. At Sac Peak,
this is within a few milliseconds.

The peripherals are a disk drive, 8.3 gigabytes formatted, and an
exabyte tape drive. We expect to acquire another exabyte drive for
continuous recording, and newer drives with greater capacity and speed
are being considered. New CPUs have been ordered to allow for more
processing on line, such as dark correction and flat fielding. Full
frame rate averages are expected.

The camera system has been used for several engineering runs, in May
and July 1995, and has overwhelmed the data reduction and storage. The
frame selection mode during the latest engineering run produced
several time sequences of granulation and sunspot images with
ultra-high resolution. The software is currently being refined, and it
is anticipated that the system will be available to the users starting
with the October-to-December quarter.

Fritz Stauffer, Thomas Rimmele

Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents