Case Studies
High Precision Photometry of Quasars
Dr. Niall Smith Cork Institute of Technology
Irish astrophysicist Niall recently returned from Spain's Sierra de Los Filabres
mountain range at the Calar Alto Observatory He collected 38-hours of video data
of quasars using the Andor FI iXon, highlighting the sensitivity of this camera
in low light conditions.
M2 Stack Aligned -- this is a combination of 39 image frames only, each of which
has been auto-correlated with a reference image (the first in the sequence) before
co-addition. 
The noise in the image is clearly significantly reduced. The stellar
profiles have a full-width-half-max of about 0.7 arc seconds, which is not a record
or anything, but is largely due to the optics of the focal reducer and the position
of the L3 chip. (Because the L3 chip is 12mm behind the front face of the glass,
it is not possible to place it at the optimum focal plane - hence although the images
are focused, they suffer from some spherical aberration and this smears the final
image out.)
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