Modified ground telescope captures this remarkable Neptune photo

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/30/modified-ground-telescope-capt.html

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“The European Southern Observatory (ESO) got this cool shot of Venus …”

Probably this should be Neptune, not Venus.

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Some very good explanations in the comments about the technology behind it.

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Pretty cool. I remember “seeing” and “adaptive optics” from astronomy ~20 years ago, which met my BA science requirement. With high-framerate high-resolution video getting nuttier year by year, I imagine more options for software-based cleanup become possible.

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LOL heheh

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“I said Venus! Venus!”

(Top Ten Letterman Dirty Astronaut Joke Punchlines) (I have no idea why this has autonumbered these)

  1. “You call that Mission Control?”
  2. “The Titan 2, the Saturn 5, and Cher’s waterbed.”
  3. “Heat shields? I thought you said Brooke Shields!”
  4. “30 seconds and holding – and please keep holding!”
  5. “Hey! Blame gravity!”
  6. “I said Venus! Venus!”
  7. “Who do I look like? Buzz Aldrin?”
  8. “10, 9, 8, 7 – oops!”
  9. “It wasn’t G-forces that killed that monkey.”
  10. “Gee, it tasted like Tang!”
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“New adaptive optics that ignore earth’s atmosphere”

‘New adaptive optics that go out of their way to measure, analyze, predict and compensate for every nuance of the earth’s atmosphere’ might be more accurate.

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Some observers use the trick of ‘stacking’ multiple short exposures, with software to align the frames with each other using a guide star. That’s a fine way to achieve similar results to adaptive optics in software. However, a fast camera readout is needed. Also, most of the frames are thrown away because they have motion blur.

So this method is more efficient, but the hardware is rather expensive and delicate.

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