From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>

Date: July 14, 2009 8:04:41 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Lucky imaging

Sorry for starting a new topic on this, I couldn't figure out when I talked about this last...

I just found a thread on CN about Lucky imaging, and posted the following, that I thought folks might be interested in:

"From the pictures (and the sidebar in the S&T article, whenever that was), the Schillings/Moore team were using a Point Grey Research Flea2 camera for their "zerocam", plus an image intensifier. I don't know the specs of their particular model, but the fleas come with chips from 1/3" to 2/3" format, and either RGB or monochrome: Flea2 I have 2 flea cameras - an "original Flea" 640x480 with 7.4 micron pixels and a Flea2 with 1032x776 4.65 micron pixels. I've had the Flea2 for about 3 years now. It cost about $750 at that time.

It's unfortunate that there isn't more information on what they did and how they did it. What software they used, for example.

Milton Auperle's "Astro IIDC" software can do the alignment and stacking, but I don't know if that's what the zerocammers used: Astro IIDC . It's Mac-only software, and is designed to work with firewire cameras (the Flea2 is FW 800, so quite a bit faster throughput than USB2, and no separate power cable required). Astro IIDC can either average the frames in the stack, or add them. I would think that adding would be the way to go with the DSO technique described here, but I've not tried that.

I've been trying to find out where one gets the image intensifiers anymore. And how much they cost. I'm a planetary guy, and I'd like to experiment with intensified, very short exposure video of Uranus and Neptune with my 12.5" Cassegrain. I've taken "normal" video of it with my color Flea2, but the exposures were about 1/2" even with the 12.5" aperture, so seeing needs to be exceptional. But if the image were intensified, I would think that very short exposures, and a helluva lot of them, might allow some detail to be resolved (my 1/2 second exposure stack did reveal the brighter N polar region, however).

So, if anybody knows where I can find an image intensifier to make my own version of the "zerocam" for faint planets, I'd be interested in hearing about it!

-Tim. "