'Lucky' camera creates ground-based images better than Hubble's.(ASTRONOMICAL IMAGING)

Publication: Laser Focus World

Publication Date: 01-OCT-07

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Astronomers have taken pictures of objects that are higher in resolution than anything produced by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), at a fraction of the cost. Researchers at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, England) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech; Pasadena, CA), used an adaptive-imaging technique and a camera called "LuckyCam" to obtain the sharpest pictures of stars and nebulae ever produced from a ground-based observatory (see figure).

Images from ground-based telescopes are limited in resolution by the shimmering of the Earth's atmosphere, the same effect that makes stars twinkle. Adaptive-optics (AO) systems enable astronomers...

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