Curtis Computer CCDS user manual Ccds Acquisition Camera User’s Manual

CCDS Acquisition Camera User’s Manual

You may also use the “Grab” button on the toolbar. This will take only one image instead of a continuous sequence of images. This may be useful if you want to take an image of your object’s position on the slit for reference on a future night. You may then save this image to the disk (see Section 7). Of course, you may also save any of the focus images to the disk by stopping the focus sequence and saving the last image downloaded. There is functionally no difference between a “grab” image and a “focus” image.

Once the system downloads the image from the camera it will auto-display it to the screen. Figure 5 shows a sample image:

Figure 5. Image taken with the CCDS acquisition camera on a photometric, moonless night through the clear filter. You can clearly see the slit in this 10-second exposure. The star inside the circle is V=19 mag.

CCDOps also allows the observer to change the display parameters of the downloaded images. In the “Contrast” pop-up box that appears once an image is downloaded, you may change the display contrast by typing in new numbers in the “Back/Range” boxes or clicking the up/down buttons to the right of each value. You may also switch between manual and auto-adjust by toggling the “Auto” checkbox. Clicking the “Apply” button allows recent changes to take effect. You may perform these actions while focus mode is running. Changing the look-up table may make very faint objects or the slit more visible.

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