[Aavso-photometry] Start up question

[Rumrill, Donald M (US SSA)]

Hello all,

 

I am a fairly recently started amateur "star gazer," though I've paid
close attention to astronomy for many years.  I am thinking, that to
give myself a little more focus than just gawking around the heavens,
that I would look into photometry for a sense of purpose and perhaps a
little contribution to the avocation.  Many years ago, I designed a star
simulator with a detector at the system's output as part of a feedback
control to set and maintain the simulated star's magnitude.  I used a
photodiode and boxcar integration to achieve this, with light levels
down in the 10's of photons.  Based on this experience, my thoughts were
to build something similar to attach to my telescope and make
measurements; similar to the photometers described in AASVO's on-line
literature.  My question is this:  Given the state of art ofCCD cameras,
is it worth my while to build a photometer, or would I be better off
saving my pennies and purchasing a CCD camera system?  I could probably
build a photometer for around $100 given my contacts within the
electronics industry.  I haven't done an error budget yet, but expect to
be well under 0.1%.

 

Don R.