Rockland Astronomy Club Presents Lecture on the Nature of Astronomical Color and How It Effects Camera Images at SUNY Rockland Community College

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: November 29, 2007

CONTACT: Lisa Saunders

(845) 574-4244

Rockland Astronomy Club Presents Lecture on the Nature of Astronomical Color
and How It Effects Camera Images at SUNY Rockland Community College

Suffern, NY - A member of the Rockland Astronomy Club will lecture on the nature of color in the night sky and how a camera “sees” that color at SUNY Rockland Community College.

Jim Burnell will discuss color vision and how it relates to the objects we see in the night sky on Friday, November 30, 8:00 p.m. in the Academic I building, Room 1106. Admission is free and open to the public.

The nature of the color coming from the light of astronomical objects will be described as well as how this knowledge can be used when imaging these objects. Several different methods of representing color information in an image will be demonstrated.

Jim Burnell has been an eyeball astronomer for most of his 51 years. He received his bachelor’s and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University in the 1970's. In the mid 1980's, while a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, he became fascinated with the images being made available over the fledgling Internet from the NASA space probes and major observatories. His technical background (BSEE, MSEE) served him well as he started building his own CCD cameras. Early on he determined that the image processing software then available was difficult to use and severely lacking in power, so he teamed up with Richard Berry to write the Astronomical Image Processing for Windows (AIP4Win) software package which accompanies their book, "The Handbook of Astronomical Image Processing," now in its second edition.

For more information, contact Saeed Safaie, SUNY Rockland Community College Professor, Science, at (845) 574 – 4534

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Rockland Community College, a unit of the State University of New York, is located 25 miles northwest of NYC. The majority of its students transfer to four-year colleges, and many find immediate employment upon earning their associate's degree or certificate. The College also offers others, from preschoolers to senior citizens, the opportunity to simply learn something new. Quality education...at a price you can afford.