Category: Cool

Adaptive Optics Produces Ultrasharp Images Of Sunspot

Adaptive Optics

Greg sent this to me:

The Dunn has two high-order adaptive optics benches, the only telescope in the world with two systems, which enhances instrument setup and operations.
This image was built from a series of 80 images, each 1/100th of a second long (10 ms), taken over a period of 3 seconds by a high-resolution Dalsa 4M30 CCD camera in its first observing run after being added to the Dunn. Speckle imaging reconstruction then compiles the 80 images and greatly reduces residual seeing aberrations.

I wonder if any digital camera makers will ever offer adaptive optics on their products. It may not be practical to do the layering of images if your subject is moving, but it might be useful to chart out the lens flaws and build a digital filter to correct them in camera.

Adaptive Optics Produces Ultrasharp Images Of Sunspot

CD Sextant

CD Sextant

This is by far one one the more impressive DIY projects that I have seen of late. Normaly a sextant is an expencive and very precice instrument but with a CD case, some LEGO bricks and a few mirrors you can build one. I don’t think you wan’t to use it to sail around the world but you could ( by the way you had better be an ace at celestrial navigation before you start Mister!)
Anyway, the project is simple enough that you could build it in a weekend. It would be fun to take out on trips and ‘shoot the sun’ and try to figure out where you are on this big ‘ol sphere we call home.

[via hack a day]
CD sextant

Toyota Devises Shrub To Purify & Cool Air

Oh so cool! I would love to see these sorts of things all over the place. Much better than those darn orange trees (rever try to eat the fruit from those! Yuck!).

Toyota said recently that it has developed a new species of the Cherry Sage shrub family that effectively absorbs harmful substances in the air. The new species, called Kirsch Pink, will be sold for 380 yen per pot through Toyota Roof Garden Co, a Toyota Motor subsidiary, from March next year. While Cherry Sage plants are known to absorb nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and other harmful substances in the air, the new species does so 1.3 times more effectively, Toyota says.

Toyota Devises Shrub To Purify & Cool Air

Dirty Bomb Detector

Dirty bomb detector

Allways handy to have around.

Radioactive isotopes (used in dirty bombs) don’t emit anything that human receptors can detect. The Micro Bomb Detector was designed to locate missing radioactive isotopes and dirty bombs . The chance of locating a dirty bomb or suspicious radioactive isotope improves greatly as more Micro Bomb Detectors travel throughout our communities and highways. Experience Peace of Mind…

Only $219US.

[via The Red Ferret Journal]
Dirty bomb detector