🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2n5sa1$beu@vanbc.wimsey.com> mfraser@vanbc.wimsey.com (Mark Fraser) writes:
>... I have often wondered about the CCD amateur astronomy
>cameras.  A little bit of filtering, a little bit of tweaking, a little
>bit of lens work, and presto.....

If they're silicon CCDs, which I believe all of them are, forget it.
Thermal-IR photons simply are not energetic enough to register on them.
You need quite exotic materials, and preferably liquid-nitrogen temperatures,
to get any results at all with thermal IR.  (Note also that the exotic
materials are needed for the lenses and filters too, not just the imaging
device itself.  Conventional lens materials are 100% opaque to thermal IR.)
You can get good results in short-wavelength IR with CCDs, but thermal IR
is another world entirely.

There are some new technologies in the wings that may change this, but
right now, doing imaging with thermal IR is *hard*.
-- 
Critics have long said "NASA specializes| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
in pork"; now that's White House policy.|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry