Howdy,
I’ve been working for the Catalina Sky Survey for a couple of years. For many
years, CSS has been one of the most productive discoverers of Near Earth
Objects (NEOs), that is, of asteroids and comets that are potentially hazardous
to the Earth.
As you might imagine there are numerous interesting aspects to this project,
and timekeeping is one. We use Meinberg clocks and IRIG PCIe cards to capture
TTL signals from the stepper motor controller of the large camera shutters to
attach accurate and reasonably precise UTC time tags to each celestial search
field. Our telescope control also depends on knowing the time. Etc.
I’m at the annual planetary sciences meeting (in Provo this year) and several
groups have expressed interest in duplicating our setup (details of FO
converters, Schmitt triggers, etc, omitted) in a “cheap black box” to quote one
fellow. Lots of people contribute productively to NEO observations, including
amateurs and small teams with little funding. Improving their timekeeping would
help keep rocks from falling on you and your family.
Any suggestions for a minimally expensive, maximally performing such
arrangement? Or alternative architectures? One group has used:
http://www.spectruminstruments.net/TM4.pdf
<http://www.spectruminstruments.net/TM4.pdf>
Thoughts?
Many thanks!
Rob Seaman
University of Arizona
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