Lumenera Aids Guinness Feat

Lumenera Corp. of Ottawa, a manufacturer of high-performance digital cameras and custom imaging solutions, has announced that its SKYnyx2-0 and Infinity2-1 CCD USB 2.0 cameras have been used to set a Guinness World Record for the largest ground-based digital lunar mosaic. In April 2009, the record-breaking team, which features 11 amateur astronomy imagers from the UK, took pictures from various locations in the UK on the same night. Lumenera’s professional astronomy cameras were combined with high-end amateur telescopes and special software to capture almost 1.2 million video frames of the 9-day-old moon. A total of 288 individual images were meticulously pieced together and color-balanced to create a single seamless mosaic. It is 87.4 megapixels in resolution, with a moon diameter of ~9550 pixels, allowing for features as small as 0.6 miles long to be seen. The cameras, chosen for their high focal length, ran at 30 fps and used a red filter that included IR block coating to prevent blooming and glare. The team also used Lumenera’s LuCam software to gather the captured data from the cameras. Sales of the image will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.