Astronomical OCam camera rolled out
- Thursday, July 2, 2009, 6:47
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ESO in collaboration with three other French laboratories has developed a unique camera, known as OCam, which can capture nearly 1500 images in a second. Dubbed as one of the most advanced ultra-fast cameras, the OCam aims at taking astronomy to the next level.
The French laboratories, who joined hands with ESO are the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Grenoble and the Observatoire de Haute Provence.
The high precision faint light camera has the ability to capture images at a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels. It comes with all the adaptive optics instruments, which we find in ground-based telescopes. The camera features ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), ground-based astronomy flagship facility.
As the reviews, the camera will certainly help the astronomers to study the Universe in a better way. OCam is dubbed as the part of the second-generation VLT instrument SPHERE. It will be installed in 2011, SPHERE.
As widely known, atmospheric chaos causes blur images, which are captured by using ground-based telescopes. To solve this problem, OCam has incorporated CCD220 detector to ensure fast and sensitive performance. OCam provides ten times lesser readout noise than other traditional cameras used in the detectors.
Jean-Luc Gach of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, France played a major role in developing the hi-tech camera, which has the ability to capture thousand of images in a second.
He said, “Thanks to this technology, all the new generation instruments of ESO’s Very Large Telescope will be able to produce the best possible images, with an unequalled sharpness.”
OCam consists of a control system designed in France with German and Spanish support. The sensitive detectors are developed in the UK.
Technology is the resultant of discoveries. The same logic applies for OCam. However, we are not informed about the price and availability of the device.
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