The second day continued the excitement at the 2010 Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) in San Jose, California. I heard a great talk by Todd Klaus, lead engineer at the Kepler Science Operations Center, at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Klaus’ lecture “From the Backyard to Space — Parallels Between the Kepler Mission and the Backyard Astrophotographer” was just the kind of subject matter AIC attendees love. He gave an overview of Kepler, and then engaged in a detailed account of how the spacecraft acquires images, what processing techniques mission scientists use, and how the data finally reaches Earth.
Throughout his talk, he compared the techniques to his own (he’s a long-time astroimager). He also showed us the similarities and differences between Kepler’s camera (which uses 42 CCD chips) and the Santa Barbara Instrument Group CCD camera he captures celestial objects with.
This was heady yet fascinating stuff, and it generated lots of questions afterward. I found two of his points the most interesting. First, researchers employ pixel-level calibration to the continuous stream of data that Kepler collects. And second, the second quarter of (currently sequestered) data contains some 400 more planets that Kepler has found. That means Kepler, in its short operational life, will more than double the number of exoplanets when scientists release its data, scheduled, if I heard correctly, for February.
So, along with lots of great information about amateur astroimaging, the AIC speakers are providing some hard science to the attendees here.
Stay tuned.
Related blogs:
Top-shelf astroimaging
Sponsor updates at AIC
Putting faces to images at AIC
The best imagers are in California
On my way to the AIC 2010