CCD-world: The Amateur Sky Survey

[Thomas F. Droege]

The Amateur Sky Survey (tass) is closing it's doors.

The reason for posting here is that some of the equipment might be
useful to the scientific community.   

The idea of tass was to build camera systems suitable for an all sky
survey and give them away (without software) to programmers found on
the internet. I call this the "Field of Dreams" scheme.  If you
build the systems, the software will come.  The scheme actually
worked. Four dual camera systems were given away and two of the
recipients wrote the code needed. Three dual systems were operated at
Batavia, IL and have taken about 230 million measurements over three
years of stars in the northern sky. Each consists of simultaneous
measurements in V and I in the range of 7 to 15. 

The systems consist of two 2k x 2k CCD442A detectors and 100
mm dia f/4 optics on a simple polar mount.  The optics are narrow
band to match the filter used.  This allowed an improved flat field
for the 5 element optics.  

The best description is at:

http://www.tass-survey.org/tass/showtell/st0010.html

More information than you can stand at:

http://www.tass-survey.org/tass/tass.shtml

The electronics is home designed and works just fine.  The best I have
done for noise is 10 e- or so but I only cool to -20 C.  No
electronic reason not to get to 3 e- with proper cooling.  The
electronics is 2 channel and there is some cross talk 1/1000 or so.
Not critical for me since I am sky noise limited.  One could always
run single channel systems.  There is lots of spare electronics.  

There is lots of stuff available here in Batavia, IL that will go
into the ash can with my impending demise.  I have cancer and it has
gotten to the state that I can no longer scramble up on the roof to
run the telescopes.  There are pretty good drawings for all the parts
and good electronics drawings.   

Some of the items:
16 completed and tested 2k x 2k CCD442A cameras.  TEC cooled
each camera has a built in V or I filter.  There are a few spare
 2" x 2" filters.  
2 Unused CCD442As lumigen coated, taped windows
16 sets of dual channel electronics.
5 completed dual channel systems
32 lenses various numbers of B, V, I, and R
Of the 20 CCD442A CCDs, most are class 3 but the company was
generous and they are probably better than class 3.  They look very
good to me.  
Many computers running on linux.  System requires an ISA slot so I
have a big collection of recent ISA slot computers that run linux.

Contact Tom Droege  droege at fastmail.fm

I will accumulate requests and then give stuff away for the best
science use.    
-- 
  Thomas F. Droege
  droege at fastmail.fm