Rayleigh criterion not a fundamental limit

[RickS]

Interesting news. Now if they can just fix my terrible seeing... :)

http://phys.org/news/2016-10-physicists-dispel-rayleigh-curse.html

[rally]

Amazing how you can look at things in a different light (pun intended) and come up with a new set of rules

Paper here if you can follow it !
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.08332v1

Judging by the dual incoherent lighting process and holograms they are using, its not something we will be able to do for amateur staronomy in the near future !

[Shiraz]

interesting stuff, what little I understood - thanks Rick.

looks to me like the starting point is that there be no atmosphere and that system noise should be low enough to permit photon counting. Good for microscopy, but probably rules it out for us for now...

[RickS]

I didn't think it would have any immediate application to amateur astrophotography, but it's interesting when something thought to be a fundamental limit is found not to be...

[Atmos]

It is definitely itself interesting, I don't see myself getting seeing good enough to reach the limit of my 5.1" scope (~0.89") for testing.

[Slawomir]

Interesting, thank you Rick for sharing.

I will dare to add, that two fundamental limits for most amateur astronomers are cash and time :lol:

[Ryderscope]

How very true Suavi. To pick up Rick's point though, we can continue to surprise ourselves by exceeding limits that were until recently considered 'unexceedable'. I have found a way to remove the time limit by finally retiring from my full time work. There may, however, be an inverse relationship between the input metrics of time and cash. This will be explored further (time permitting) :D

[RickS]

Congrats on your retirement, Rodney. I'm hoping to find there are huge quantities of dark cash out there somewhere :lol: