Ground-based observations of uranus and neptune using CCD instruments

The author verifies that with the help of charge-coupled devices (CCD) great progress is being made in ground-based astronomical observations, including the study of the remote giant planets Uranus and Neptune. In reading the CCD the top row of pixels (potential wells) is moved into the sequential (shift) reading register; after this each row (line) of pixels moves its electrons upward (in each column) until the bottom row is cleared. This process is repeated for each row until the device is interrogated sequentially. The use of CCD detectors for purposes of image acquisition and spectroscopy has already found wide popularity at astronomical observatories, and soon it will spread to space research. The first known attempts to use CCD to obtain astronomical images was made by the author and his colleagues in April 1976. The result was the first observations of structure on the dark disk of Uranus. In general, the more refined the mathematical provision, the more information can be extracted from the images or spectra