I'm not sure who the specific person is you are referring to, but, there are a number of people involved in video astronomy. I did a bit of searching and found the following info: Philip Masding and Mike Tyrrell have done imaging of the ISS, space shuttle, etc. http://freespace.virgin.net/philip.masding/ http://www.btinternet.com/~mikejtyrrell/index.htm email: philip.masding@virgin.net Sky and Telescope has an online article about video astronomy that has names of several people that may be of some help: http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_254_1.asp Also, there is the "freeware" astrostack software from: http://www.astrostack.com/ which is used for stacking images. Perhaps it might help. I hope that this has at least a bit of info. that might be helpful. Thanks, Dale Hooper.

-----Original Message----- From: Joe Bauman [mailto:bau@desnews.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 8:49 AM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Improved version

Hi all, Please excuse my mistakes in the last note -- I was so eager to send along my plea that I didn't proof it as I should have and it was full of typing mistakes. So here is an improved version:

I'm hoping you could help me with an idea I want to forward to the police. I can't recall the name of the professor in New England (as I seem to remember) who has taken photos of the space shuttle in orbit using some fairly ordinary equipment. The reason I'm interested is that he processes videotape that he shoots through his telescope and gets these fabulous views.

He may stack the images from the tape, enhance them through computer processing, play multiple views off each other to cancel out grain and restore details that can't be seen in any individual frame. At least that's how I believe stacking is done.

What I want to do is to refer the police to this expert, or some other specialist on image stacking, so that they will understand that the videotape taken in the Shriner's Hospital parking lot might be processed by someone to bring out details of cars that could have been involved in Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping.

If anyone knows what I'm taking about and can tell me who this expert is, or knows of a site on the Internet where the technique is discussed, I would like to pass it along to the police. Assuming they haven't already thought of doing it, or don't have the expertise themselves, they could contact this specialist and get his advice about processing the videotape.

Thanks, Joe Bauman

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