Dr. Ray F. Butler Profile

Dr. Ray F. Butler

Lecturer at National Univ of Ireland Galway

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Publications (8)

Proceedings Article | 16 June 2006 Paper

Performance modeling and development of an L3-CCD camera system for high cadence imaging with maximum efficiency

Brendan Sheehan, Caoilfhionn Lane, Raymond Butler

Proceedings Volume 6265, 62654D (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.671723

KEYWORDS: Charge-coupled devices, Sensors, Cameras, Telescopes, Imaging systems, Computing systems, Stars, Avalanche photodetectors, Signal to noise ratio, Electron multiplying charge coupled devices

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Proceedings Article | 1 June 2005 Paper

Spectrophotometry: imaging with custom narrow-band filters and an automated data-reduction pipeline

Kieran Forde, Raymond Butler, David Peat, Aaron Golden, Seathrun O'Tuairisg

Proceedings Volume 5823, (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.605179

KEYWORDS: Stars, Optical filters, Absorption, Image filtering, Telescopes, Photometry, Charge-coupled devices, RGB color model, Spectroscopy, Absorption filters

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Abundance variations of carbon and nitrogen in globular star clusters provide astronomers with a means to determine a cluster's evolutionary past. Moreover, these clusters are so ancient (~13 billion years) and so well preserved that they provide an ideal diagnostic for the overall chemical history of the Milky Way Galaxy. Traditionally, spectroscopy is the preferred method to perform investigations into such theories. However, it is not without its drawbacks: spectroscopy can normally only be obtained star by star, and both large telescopes and a great deal of time is required to carry out research in this manner. As globular clusters are known to contain up to a million stars, studying each star individually would take too much time to return a true representative sample of the cluster stars. So, we opt instead for a spectrophotometric technique and a statistical approach to infer a cluster's composition variations. This has required the design and use of new custom narrow-band filters centered on the CH and CN molecular absorption bands or their adjacent continua. Two Galactic clusters (M71 & M92) with contrasting characteristics have been chosen for this study. In order to process this data a header-driven (i.e. automated) astronomical data-processing pipeline was developed for use with a family of CCD instruments known as the FOSCs. The advent of CCD detectors has allowed astronomers to generate large quantities of raw data on a nightly basis, but processing of this amount of data is extremely time and resource intensive. In our case the majority of our cluster data has been obtained using the BFOSC instrument on the 1.52m Cassini Telescope at Loiano, Italy. However, as there are a number of these FOSC instruments throughout the world, our pipeline can be easily adapted to suit any of them. The pipeline has been tested using various types of data ranging from brown dwarf stars to globular cluster images, with each new dataset providing us with new problems/bugs to solve and overcome. The pipeline performs various tasks such as data reduction including image de-fringing, image registration and photometry, with final products consisting of RGB colour images and colour magnitude diagrams (CMD).

Proceedings Article | 16 September 2004 Paper

Simulating instruments for mining uncalibrated archives

Bruno Voisin, Alberto Micol, Seathrun O'Tuairisg, Raymond Butler, Aaron Golden, Andrew Shearer

Proceedings Volume 5493, (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.551461

KEYWORDS: Device simulation, Image processing, Mining, Telescopes, Image filtering, Data archive systems, Observatories, Signal to noise ratio, Astronomy, Data mining

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Proceedings Article | 16 September 2004 Paper

A pipeline for automatically processing and analyzing archival images from multiple instruments

Seathrun O'Tuairisg, Aaron Golden, Raymond Butler, Andrew Shearer, Bruno Voisin

Proceedings Volume 5493, (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.550669

KEYWORDS: Image analysis, Stars, Astronomy, Charge-coupled devices, Image processing, Telescopes, Photometry, Image registration, Calibration, Data archive systems

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Proceedings Article | 16 September 2004 Paper

Data reduction and analysis pipelines: the simple approach for the xFOSC family of instruments

Raymond Butler, Kieran Forde

Proceedings Volume 5493, (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.551848

KEYWORDS: Calibration, Stars, Telescopes, Photometry, Point spread functions, Charge-coupled devices, Astronomy, Observatories, Optical instrument design, Astronomical telescopes

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Proceedings Article | 27 August 2003 Paper

A modular camera system for high time-resolution photometry

Daniel Buckton, Oliver Ryan, Andrew Shearer, R. Michael Redfern, Raymond Butler

Proceedings Volume 4876, (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.464065

KEYWORDS: Cameras, Imaging systems, Sensors, Avalanche photodetectors, Electronics, Quantum efficiency, Telescopes, Photon counting, Polarization, Data archive systems

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Proceedings Article | 19 March 2003 Paper

Application of deconvolution to images from the EGRET gamma-ray telescope

Symeon Charalabides, Andrew Shearer, Raymond Butler

Proceedings Volume 4877, (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.463696

KEYWORDS: Point spread functions, Deconvolution, Wavelets, Gamma radiation, Telescopes, Denoising, Astronomy, Spatial resolution, Inverse optics, Image restoration

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Proceedings Article | 19 March 2003 Paper

Image PSF-matching and subtraction: a powerful astronomical technique and its application to industrial imaging

Raymond Butler, Seathrun O'Tuairisg, Andrew Shearer, Aaron Golden

Proceedings Volume 4877, (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.463684

KEYWORDS: Stars, Point spread functions, Astronomy, Image quality, Image registration, Convolution, Image processing, Photometry, Exoplanets, Image analysis

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Showing 5 of 8 publications

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