DailyDirt: Cameras For Science

Innovation

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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.

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