RE: Cellular Astronomy

Bob Leif wrote:

>Two simple points: 1) If you signal average, you will probably need to use
>32 bit integers, preferably unsigned.	Do not trust your camera vendor on
>this.	The camera should store the sum of the data as a 32 bit RAW image.
>The investigator can then determine the proper mode for scaling the data to
>16 bits.  Adobe Photoshop and Canon cameras employ a RAW mode that stores
>and reads the two dimensional array of pixels.  The final 16 bit TIF or
>other file format can be generated by Photoshop and possibly other
>equivalent products.

Actually, I don't think any of the cameras (SBIG's or the cheap ones) 
captures data to more than 16 bits in any given exposure, but you're right 
about storing summed images in a 32-bit format. I can't vouch for the 
inexpensive cameras, but the more serious ones such as SBIG's do not use 
lossy compression, making it possible to recover the matrix of actual pixel 
values even from files stored in their proprietary compressed formats.


>2) The long lifetimes of the lanthanide macrocycles, Quantum Dyes(R) permit
>time-gating, which eliminates the background fluorescence.  Conceivably with
>time-gating, one could use a simple transmission microscope optic.

That's a good point, and many of the serious fluorescence spectroscopy 
folks have already noticed that pulsed LEDs make good light sources for 
time-resolved measurements. As I recall, though, the lanthanides like UV 
excitation, and the UV LEDs haven't yet achieved the power/brightness 
levels of the blue devices. But I read the other day that somebody was 
successfully using 280 nm UV LEDs as germicidal lamps, so I suppose it's 
only a matter of time.


>I hope we can continue this discussion at the ISAC meeting.

Me too.

-Howard