Hello everyone,
I am an advanced amateur astronomer from Greece and with 2 other guys we plan to build our own observatory that will use many telescopes which will act as one through the combination of all CCD cameras to one. So I would like to be informed from some experts in electronics, if possible, as I have some questions that are waiting to be answered.
A little description first; What we plan to do is to use 6 11-inch SC telescopes, all with the same focal ratio and at the focus of each of those 6 optical tubes there will be a CCD camera. Total of 6 CCDs, that will be all the same to each other, as well, in order to keep the same image scale and field of view. Something like e.g the Dragonfly Telescope, that uses a lot of lenses that act as one (actually giving a larger effective telescope aperture that resolves much more detail compared to a single, monolithic optical tube with its CCD camera) through the combination of the CCDs.
The question is, how can we combine the outputs of the CCD cameras to act as one Super-CCD? Do we have to convert each camera's output into a tramsmission line and then combine the transmission lines all togetherfor the signal to be summed into one? And how can we do that, technically, if this is the way to go? If this can be done, would we have to make (or buy) a device that does the summing of the signal to one for every exposure we do? And of course, if there is such a device (or if can be constructed) it is necesairy to be connected to the PC, in order to control all CCDs as one through this device, actually gathering the light of a 26.9" diameter telescope (sqrt(6)*27.9 cm) and with at least 2.45 times the ability to see more detail than a monolithic 26.9" telescope.
For a better explanation about what I was thinking, I created this in Gimp;
Thanks in advance.
I am an advanced amateur astronomer from Greece and with 2 other guys we plan to build our own observatory that will use many telescopes which will act as one through the combination of all CCD cameras to one. So I would like to be informed from some experts in electronics, if possible, as I have some questions that are waiting to be answered.
A little description first; What we plan to do is to use 6 11-inch SC telescopes, all with the same focal ratio and at the focus of each of those 6 optical tubes there will be a CCD camera. Total of 6 CCDs, that will be all the same to each other, as well, in order to keep the same image scale and field of view. Something like e.g the Dragonfly Telescope, that uses a lot of lenses that act as one (actually giving a larger effective telescope aperture that resolves much more detail compared to a single, monolithic optical tube with its CCD camera) through the combination of the CCDs.
The question is, how can we combine the outputs of the CCD cameras to act as one Super-CCD? Do we have to convert each camera's output into a tramsmission line and then combine the transmission lines all togetherfor the signal to be summed into one? And how can we do that, technically, if this is the way to go? If this can be done, would we have to make (or buy) a device that does the summing of the signal to one for every exposure we do? And of course, if there is such a device (or if can be constructed) it is necesairy to be connected to the PC, in order to control all CCDs as one through this device, actually gathering the light of a 26.9" diameter telescope (sqrt(6)*27.9 cm) and with at least 2.45 times the ability to see more detail than a monolithic 26.9" telescope.
For a better explanation about what I was thinking, I created this in Gimp;
Thanks in advance.