DIY Instruments for Amateur Space

Chapter 4. Fundamental Detector Types

As we will often note, there are four flavors or types of data:

• Images → imaging
• Brightness → photometry
• Color → spectroscopy
• Timing → variability

Each involves a separate data goal, and together all four fold into your detector profile and its bandwidth needs (Example 4-1).

Example 4-1. Examples of data types

Brightness: e.g. 3.846 x 1,026 W in luminosity, 4.83 absolute magnitude

Spectral: e.g. "color image plus IR/thermal"

Timing: e.g. "On during the day, off at night"

You can also mix these data goals. An imaging spectrometer is a camera (imaging) that gives you a separate data frame for each color. Instead of seeing one picture, you can compare, for example, the image in red against the image in blue. ...