Acquisition Systems

Astrophotography is never far from a microprocessor and there are many different uses of computers to create sophisticated acquisition systems. Astrophotography is not exempt and even if the user is simply using traditional photographic equipment, they will undoubtedly be using a computer and image processing software to enhance their images. This chapter is an overview of what software can achieve, some of the terminology and open considerations. Image processing software alone moves into a different ball-game as the demands of calibration and manipulation are outside the scope of traditional applications. Image acquisition software offers a dizzy range of capabilities: some do a single task very well; others take on several of the major roles of telescope control, acquisition and image processing. There are several major integrated packages including Prism, Maxim DL and TheSkyX. Mount alignment requires a sense of time, location and an initial physical orientation. Locating an almost invisible object is challenging and there are many soft-ware alignment utilities.