Re:Apollo 13

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I wrote:

"On the roof of Building 16A at the Manned Spacecraft Center, engineer Andy
Saulietes with three of his colleagues, had been pointing a 14 inch telescope
with a charged coupled device (CCD) hooked up to a black and white TV"

Jim Scotti replied: 

"I hate to nitpick, but the observation you mention occured before any
useful CCDs had been produced (or perhaps even invented).  I suspect the
observation was made with a regular vidicon tube perhaps with an image
intensifier in front of it at most.  A hunt through Sky and Telescope
might turn up more details of the observation as I think I remember seeing
it there (maybe Aviation Leak would also be a useful place to search for
images of the debris cloud from Apollo 13).  I believe that the first CCDs
imagers appeared between about 1973 and 1975." 


I'm sorry, your absolutely right.  The engineers were looking at an image on a
black and white TV and I "automatically assumed" a CCD device.  Thanks for the
correction.


Dan Poeder

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