AIC 2010 under way from a new venue, the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Apart from some problems last night with hot water, it seems to be quite nice.

My first session was Stan Moore and CCDStack. Lots of good imaging theory as usual. Essentially, normalization of images is critical for proper data rejection. This involves both equalizing the bottom point and the slope of the brightness in the image. He also recommends using dark adjustment in software, based on a library of good darks no more than 5 degrees C from the images. Lots of darks with long exposures. Stan is very concerned with read noise as a contributor to overall noise in an image.

The second session is Tony Hallas on advanced Photoshop techniques focused on adding narrowband data to RGB images. Several ways to take colorized, via hue / saturation, images on top of the RGB image.

Off to the exhibition hall!

A quick update to complete day one. Neil Flemings presentation on narrowband was excellent, and Brad Moore’ talk on the imaging tran was very good as well. The evening program was nice after a good dinner, and I am looking forward to the new Astro-Physics command center application.