Re: Astro. instrumentation books

[brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>]

At 10:16 10/16/97 +1000, you wrote:
> I'm designing an elective for our final year instrumentation & elec. eng. 
> students on astronomy, with an emphasis on astronomical instrumentation & 
> image processing. (These students have done no astro. before, and their 
> physics & maths background is only average.)
> The library here has some spare money to buy references, if I'm quick - 
> does anyone have any suggestions - preferably for references suitable for 
> the students, but also for references for me! I already have some 
> reasonable ones in radioastronomy, because that's my field, but I could 
> do with some on optical telescope design principles, CCDs, optical image 
> processing, infrared & X-ray instrumentation, ...
> I suppose that it's too much to expect that there's an appropriate text?
> Cheers
> Margaret Mazzolini
I suspect that if there were a good text, you'd know it.
 But at the risk of playing just one note, I'll note
you should refer to the old SciAm Amateur Scientist article on 
the twinkle suppressor that Leighton used at Mt. Wilson.
This is included in Stong's Amateur Scientist Book of Projects.

 Making over the electronics into modern form is an educational 
exercise in itself - as the people who are now considering the proton
magnetometer from the same (SciAm) source are finding.

I think you would be doing your students a very great service by
having them do some digital signal processing. This is a field of 
growing importance - ripe for "demathematizing".
 Optical signal processing is fun - but this might be a step 
in the wrong direction for them...

Sincerely,

brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK