[amsat-bb] Re: Amazing image captured 2 miles from my house

[David B. Toth]

At 08:59 AM 6/29/2007, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
>Well, I'd believe a Ritchey-Chrétien is capable of that kind of
>resolution .. :D .. have had an RC on my fantasy wish list for
>years.  (And will continue to have it on that list for many years to
>come, neither I nor anyone I know can afford one.)  We all can dream,
>right?
>
>Tell your friends I deeply envy their scope and they do great work
>with it!  :)

It isn't because it is an RC ... Ron Dantowitz 
was doing similar work with a Schmidt-Cassegrain ...
This is a larger aperture scope with a longer 
focal length, giving him better resolution ...
He's been imaging the ISS for years now, but this 
is certainly a break-through image ...

They aren't using CCD cameras but rather video 
cameras ... even cheap web-cams can now provide 
incredible views of the planets, as already 
stated, because we take hundreds or thousands of 
images and now have software that keeps the good 
images and discards the bad ones. It then 
"stacks" the good ones to improve image density. 
There is an article in Sky and Telescope recently 
by Dr. Don Parker that talks about this.

Dave VE3GYQ/W8
Spencerville, OH