Monthly Archives: November 2015

Petr Kubánek: Data processing of Astronomical Images

1915390_1284011425104_3974180_nPetr Kubánek received master degree in Software engineering from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague, and master degree in fuzzy logic from University of Granada in Spain. Currently he is research fellow at the Institute of Physics of Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.  He is developing RTS2 (Remote Telescope System 2nd Version), a package for fully autonomous astronomical observatory control and scheduling. RTS2 is being used on multiple observatories around the planet, on all continents (as one of the RTS2 collaborator is currently winterovering at Dome C in Antartica). Petr’s interests and expertises spans from distributed device control through databases towards image processing and data mining. During his carrier, he collaborated with top world institutions (Harvard/CfA on FLWO 48″ telescope, UC Berkeley on RATIR 1.5m telescope, NASA/IfA on ATLAS project, ESA/ISDEFE on TBT project, SLAC and BNL on Large Synoptics Survey Telescope (LSST) CCD testing) and enjoyed travel to restricted areas (scheduled for observing run at US Naval Observatory in Arizona). Hi is on kind-of parental leave, enjoying his new family, and slowly returning back to vivid astronomical world. His talk takes place on Tuesday, December 8, 2pm in room E104.

Data processing of Astronomical Images

Astronomy and astrophysics is one of the science fields leverageing most rapidly technological progress. Be it with simple lens used by Galileo to study the stars and planets, to modern, huge marvellous telescopes using top of the art control systems and detectors, technological progress is tightly coupled with progress in astronomy and astrophysics. In this talk, I will review principles of data acquisition and processing as performed by astronomers around the planet. I will start with basic processing done on film cameras and photography, progressing towards advanced processing and interpretation of multi terabytes digital data acquired by most productive astronomical instruments.

Video recording of the talk is publicly available.