AstraLux Sur is a Lucky Imaging Camera built for the New Technology Telescope NTT located at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Lucky Imaging with AstraLux Sur
Click here to switch to the AstraLux Norte webpages

What is Lucky Imaging? Image distortions due to atmospheric seeing are not static. The degree of image degradation varies over a wide range on timescales of seconds. Exploit this fact and:
(1) Acquire a large number of short-exposure images, typically 10.000 * 30ms (needs high-speed, high-sensitivity, low-noise detector).
(2) Measure the image quality of each single frame (needs a reference object).
(3) Select the best few percent of all images, typically 1-10%.
(4) Combine these high-quality images to get the final improved result.

Pioneering work by Craig Mackay, Bob Tubbs et al. at the Nordic Optical Telescope (LuckyCam).

AstraLux Sur is the sister instrument of AstraLux Norte, which had first light in July 2006 on the 2.2m telescope of Calar Alto observatory.

MPIA AstraLux Sur team: Carolina Bergfors, Armin Böhm, Wolfgang Brandner, Sebastian Daemgen, Thomas Henning, Stefan Hippler, Felix Hormuth, Armin Huber, Markus Janson, Boyke Rochau, Ralf-Rainer Rohloff, Karl Wagner.

Camera specs; our model is DU-897D-CS0-#BV
Fore-optics, filter wheel, and standard image orientation
Filter data, QE data,
La Silla atmosphere data
Wikipedia article about Lucky Imaging
Publications, user's guide, log sheets
Performance
First light pictures
Links
last update: 19 April, 2018
editor: Stefan Hippler