RE: Focus indication

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Arne,

Perhaps you don't understand what Rob has been doing for me.  I want 
something to watch so that I know that things are working OK.  Rob's 
present code is launched after a new file set is written.  With luck it 
takes no time from the observing program since it runs in the time between 
the end of the file write and the end of the exposure.

Rob puts up two 200x200 boxes of part of the image.  He also displays mean 
and sigma of the image.  This helps to identify the sky conditions.  For 
example, I may have left a light on upstairs.  I will still get data but 
the sigma and the mean will be high.  This also shows clouds.  It also 
shows things like whether I have left the lens caps on.  The focus 
indication is meant to be one more bit of diagnostics.  Possibly it is 
fuzzy due to clouds.  Possibly conditions have changed enough that I should 
stop and refocus.  It is very comforting to look at the display and see stars.

Tom Droege

At 11:34 AM 6/13/01 -0700, you wrote:
>While I'm not going to prevent you from having fun,
>the real question is why you feel the focus indication
>is a necessary part of your code.
>Arne