Quote:
Originally Posted by PRejto
So, just to be clear, am I to understand from recent comments that Dragonfly has not made any significant advance in imaging to a fainter magnitude than previously possible? If so, it would be more than interesting to have some comments here from the Drangonfly team. I wonder if they would respond if shown this thread?
Peter
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looks to me like a very useful tool for doing one specific job - finding dim extended objects - in which role it appears to do very well.
The compromises they made to get there are:
- resolution is nothing like as good as seeing will allow: but they don't care about stars, just the extended objects that lie far beyond.
- no capability for spectra (although bicolour possible): but that's what the huge telescopes are for.
- significant extra processing complexity needed due to multiple focal plane arrays: but that is manageable.
Agree that there seem to be some internal inconsistencies in the presentation, but the overall thrust that large scopes are not necessarily the best approach for really deep low-res imaging looks to be valid. The ability to get down well below F1.0 by adding extra "high end consumer quality" units is particularly appealing and makes this unique as far as I am aware.