Tricks, Tips, and Miscellaneous items related to Cookbook and other CCD Cameras. Also check related sites under the Links section.
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- CCD Images Taken at CSP
- A few images taken at the 1996 Connecticut Star Party. I intentionally performed no image processing on these to give you a good idea of what comes directly out of the Cookbook CCD Camera.
- Plans for a Flip Mirror and Filter Wheel
- Complete plans and instructions for building a flip mirror/filter wheel assembly for your CCD camera.
- Plans for a CCD Slide
- Complete plans and instructions for building a sliding CCD/eyepiece assembly if you don't have enough focus travel for a flip mirror.
- Digi-Key Home Page
- Digi-Key now has it's entire catalog on the web! This is a great source of electronic parts for the Cookbook Camera. Unfortunately, they don't carry the Texas Instruments CCD chips themselves. I got mine from Newark Electronics (1-800-367-3573).
- My Version of the Cookbook CCD Camera
- I left the electronics pretty much alone, but changed everything else.
- Comparison of CCD Chips
- A listing of the popular chips for CCD astronomy. Sizes, resolutions and which cameras use what.
- Construction Notes
- A collection of problems and workarounds encountered while building the Cookbook Camera.
- Schematic for a Digital Temperature Readout
- Uses a semiconductor temperature sensor for more linear measurements than you can get with a thermistor.
- Reference and Reset Levels
- How to improve your dynamic range a bit and how to make the reference and reset levels more stable.
- Cooling Fluids
- Some notes on alternative cooling fluids for the closed circuit heat exchanger.
- Grey Levels in Image Processing
- Two ways to deal with 4096 levels of grey in an image display or processing program.
- WinMIPS Image Processing Program (1.4Mb)
- Version 1.5c of Christian Buil's CCD image processing program for Windows. A full featured program with many unique options. Full documentation (in Word format) is included in the .zip file.
- Prep245 Image Processing Program (308kb)
- Here is Version 1.3a, the latest and greatest version of
Jim Burnell's Prep245. This
program provides a means of calibrating and sorting your CCD images as well as
enhancing them and removing noise. By itself Prep245 provides nearly all of the
features you need to process your images. Prep245 can also export images to
other programs, by converting CookBook CCD Camera .pa/.pb or .p1/.p2/.p3 files
to FITS or TIF format for hardcopy output or further processing by the various
image processing tools on the market. In this release both the 242 x 252 and 378 x 242 modes are now supported. This
program requires Microsoft Windows 3.1 and at least 4MB of RAM to run.
Save this self-extracting archive in the directory of your choice and execute it to extract the files - don't try to run it from your browser. Refer to the included ReadMe.txt file for additional information.
- Waldo Image Processing Program (300kb)
- This is version Alpha 4 of another Cookbook Camera Image Processing program. A version that works without a math co-processor is also included in the .zip file.
- Benoit Schillings' Camera Control Code (2.2kb)
- This is a short piece of C code for controlling the Cookbook 245 camera. Also in the .zip file are some comments for making corrections to Benoit's code. This is a good starting place for writing your own control program.
- What U See (281kb)
- This slick Windows program shows you the field of view for a number of different CCD chips and five eyepeices of your choice superimposed on an image of M31. You can add new CCD chips and also show the field with eyepeice projection. Download the self-extracting archive file by clicking above. A Java applet version is now available on the web at the NTO Web Site in Spain.
- CCD to FITS Utilities (69kb)
- A set of three DOS utilities written by Steve Lee. CCDtoFITS will
convert 378x242 mode Cookbook images to FITS format, filling in the FITS
header info with data from the log.dat file. FITSList will print out
the header information from a FITS file, and PCtoFITS will convert *.pc
(find/focus) images to FITS format. FORTRAN source code is included.
Also, you may find additional utilities or updated versions on Steve Lee's Web Page.
