Collimation - Antarctic style!

[ian_bird]

Hmmm. Intersting thought regarding collimation.

Conventional wisdom has it that you should find a bright (but not too bright) star, defocus, and observer the Airy Disk for any distortion.

But then I read this from https://antarcticsun.usap.gov

January has proven to be a busy and productive month for the South Pole Telescope and its crew. According to University of Chicago post-doc Stephen Hoover, he and his team have been working primarily on calibration of the telescope, as well as other final preparations for the upcoming winter season.

In particular, the team spent January collecting “point source” data by looking at the planet Venus. These data are used to assess the shape and other characteristics of the telescope’s beam, so that accurate measurements can be made during the winter. So far, the beam has been found to be almost completely Gaussian, or bell-shaped, which is the beam’s ideal shape.

So the South Pole Telescope is collimated by using a planet.

Is there anything in PixInsight that could do a similar analysis?

Any thoughts?

[wimvb]

Interesting. Unfortunately the link you provided doesn't show the article you refer to. I don't recall having seen an analysis tool in PixInsight that can help with collimation. But there are several instrument analysis scripts.

[Demonperformer]

Did a quick search on the site using first collimation and then Venus. Neither search returned any results. 

[ian_bird]

I can't find the article again either!

Oh well. Never mind.

I also failed to notice that the South Pole Telescope is a Microwave telescope - not optical. That may explain the Venus collimation bit.

Cheers

Ian

[Demonperformer]

Back to the drawing board ...