Scientists have invented the world’s fastest and most sensitive astronomical camera that can take 1500 images per second, even of very small objects. The first 240x240 pixel image was obtained, thanks to the joint effort of European Southern Observatory (ESO) and three French laboratories from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (CNRS/INSU).

Such cameras are a key to the next generation of optical instruments of Europe’s astronomy facility, the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Norbert Hubin, head of the Adaptive Optics at ESO, said that the camera would make giant leaps forward in the areas of the study of the universe. An innovation such as this is a necessary component for the modern optics instruments used on ground-based telescopes. The ground telescopes suffer from blurring caused by atmospheric turbulence.

The turbulence causes the stars to twinkle, which frustrates the astronomers because it blurs some of the fine details of the images. Adaptive optics can overcome these difficulties and the images taken from ground-based telescopes can be as sharp as if they are taken from space.

Cameras that are used for very high frame-rate movies require very good illumination. This is not the case in astronomical cameras. OCam and CCD220 detector solve this dilemma by being the fastest and very sensitive.

OCam has a readout noise which is ten times smaller than detectors used on VLT. This makes it possible for it to take images of the smallest of objects.