DailyDirt: Cameras For Science

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Dec 19th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

You almost can't make it to the cover of a major scientific publication like Science or Nature without a really cool picture to present your data. It seems that everyone likes pretty pictures, even scientists. So here are a few science projects with some interesting camera equipment.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has created the largest digital camera ever -- at a cost of about $165 million. This 3.2 gigapixel camera will be used in a new telescope being built on a Chilean mountaintop. [url]
Modifying a cheap digital camera to take infrared pictures was only part of a project aimed at mapping the photosynthetic activity around Asheville, North Carolina. Putting the cameras on balloons and merging the pictures together with Photosynth has created a nice collection of data for studying environmental and economic sustainability issues. [url]
MIT researchers have created a camera system capable of capturing images at a trillion frames per second. It's so fast it can actually track the movement of light as it travels -- under specific conditions, of course. [url]
To discover more interesting photography-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: cameras, data, digital images, photosynth, telescope
Companies: mit, slac

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 19 Dec 2011 @ 5:38pm

way faster than a speeding bullet...
capturing the speed of light with digital cameras seems impressive, but they must do something similar at the LHC, too, right? Smashing elementary particles together and recording what happens must be a pretty near-instantaneous event.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 19 Dec 2011 @ 5:43pm

It's so fast it can actually track the movement of light as it travels -- under specific conditions, of course.

I can just imagine the conditions:

Duuuude! Oh Wow! I can see, like, light and stuff! Eeeeeeeerrrrrrrrmmmmmmm VOOM! It's like, all bright and stuff!

Man this is some good shit!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hans, 20 Dec 2011 @ 2:10pm

Ho Ho Ho!
Mr Ho, thank you very much for this most interesting threads...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Ho (profile), 20 Dec 2011 @ 3:12pm

Re: Ho Ho Ho!
You're welcome, Hans. Good to know someone out there likes these somewhat random collections of links!
[ link to this | view in thread ]