“Lucky Camera” takes sharpest ever images of stars

"A team of astronomers have taken pictures of the stars that are sharper than anything produced by the Hubble telescope, at 50 thousandths of the cost.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), used a technique called “Lucky Imaging” to take the most detailed pictures of stars and nebulae ever produced – using a camera based on the ground. "

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/LI_Press_Releases_0807.htm


"By using a high-speed camera we can choose those images that are least affected by the atmosphere and combine them to give a much higher resolution image then we would get if we simply added together all the images irrespective of their quality. By doing this we are selecting those fortunate moments when the fluctuations in the atmosphere are at the smallest. This is what we call "Lucky Imaging"."

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/index.htm