Creation of CONtinuous CAMeras for Monitoring the Entire Night Sky: Instrumentation, Data Handling and Creation of a Performance Model
Department of
Physics
Michigan
Technological University
Houghton, MI
49931
Monitoring the night sky continuously requires extensive
planning in the form of instrumentation, software control and data management.
This talk will discuss some of the instrumentation aspects that make up the
infrastructure of the global CONCAM network, built and run from Michigan Tech.
Work is currently in progress on the creation of a "Performance
Model" for CONCAM devices. This model will interactively allow the user of
CONCAM data to input certain key parameters and obtain a prediction model of
values that CONCAM images should likely see. When compared with the actual
images (model) taken by the live CONCAMs, they should be able to help the user
provide a reasonable explanation of the effects that account towards the
difference in performance. The performance model may also help in the
understanding of errors that are created due to the various effects. Errors
could be of statistical nature (e.g. CCD noise related) as also due to natural
conditions like clouds, atmospheric extinction and so on.
(This talk is geared towards
the fulfillment of the “preliminary” Ph.D. examination requirement – Part 2)
4:00 PM,
Fisher Hall 138