What is Lucky Imaging? Image distortions due to atmospheric seeing are not static. The degree of image degradation varies over a wide range on timescales of seconds. Exploit this fact and:
(1) Acquire a large number of short-exposure images, typically 10.000 * 30ms (needs high-speed, high-sensitivity, low-noise detector).
(2) Measure the image quality of each single frame (needs a reference object).
(3) Select the best few percent of all images, typically 1-10%.
(4) Combine these high-quality images to get the final improved result. |
Pioneering work by Craig Mackay, Bob Tubbs et al. at the Nordic Optical Telescope (LuckyCam).
Since July 2008 a twin instrument, AstraLux Sur, is available as visitor instrument on the 3.5m New Technology Telescope (NTT) on La Silla Observatory in Chile.
MPIA Astralux (Norte) team: Wolfgang Brandner, Thomas Henning, Stefan Hippler, Felix Hormuth, Karl Wagner. |