Re: tricolor strip

[Chris Albertson <chris@topdog.pas1.logicon.com>]

Tom Droege wrote:
> 
> Arne,
> 
> I got it and it looks great (to me).  On a scale of "Gee Whiz" to
> "Ugh" how would you rate this picture?  I will want to show it at
> a talk that I am giving to a Northern Indiana astronomy club, and
> want to have a better idea of what I am showing.  Most of the
> pictures I see on the web sites are more "Gee Whiz" to me, but then
> what do I know.
>

I am looking at it too. When reduced to a small size so as to fit on
one sheet of paper or on the screen it is just "interesting"  But
when you see it full size, one CCD pixel mapped to one screen pixel
it is really impressive.  It makes the point that there are more stars
than you could ever count, look at or measure.   You have to print
it 8" tall to get the full impact, any smaller and you are throwing 
away detail.

The image, especially to amateur CCD astophotographers should be 
impressive.  Not many of them are used to seeing such wide fields,
or such large images 2400x768 is huge by amateur standards.  It
also looks nice on the Tektronics printer.

I have thought about creating a synthetic image from the TASS Database.
Not a plot but a real image made by convolving a PSF with the points
It would be in color and look like a photograph taken with and an ideal
wide field camera.  The point would be to show this picture when you
say that a TASS camera site can measure 100,000 stars in one night.
Then you show the synthetic image with 100,000 stars.  I'd also
have a bound set of papers holding the data that corresponds to the image.
It would look like a small phone book.  Next you say "every site collects
this every clear night".


-- 
--Chris Albertson

  chris@topdog.logicon.com                Voice:  626-351-0089  X127
  Logicon RDA, Pasadena California          Fax:  626-351-0699