Thursday, May 28, 2015

his telescope is really just 10 Canon lenses strapped together

Hunting for extremely dim galaxies is especially difficult with single-lens telescopes. That's because, no matter how technologically advanced, the device's design cannot fully eliminate detail-obscuring scattered light from the resulting images. The University of Toronto's Dragonfly Telephoto Array, however, deftly avoids that issue. This array -- one of the smallest multi-lens astronomy telescopes in use today -- is comprised of 10 Canon 400mm f/2.8 L IS II USM telephoto lenses, each costing $10,000. What's more, each lens is coated in a unique subwavelength nanomaterial that drastically reduces light reflection within the optic. And, like its insect inspiration, the Dragonfly's ten eyes can work in concert with one another to further reduce unwanted illumination in the resulting image, bringing out otherwise unseen detail in cosmic structures. According to the University of Toronto spokesman Roberto Abraham, this $100,000 system is ten times as accurate as its nearest rival.

[Image Credit: U of Toronto]

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Thursday, May 14, 2015

I Can Barely Watch This Video of the World's Longest Skywalk

Source: http://gizmodo.com/i-can-barely-watch-this-video-of-the-worlds-longest-sky-1704539127

You’ll want to read the rest of this post with your eyes shut if you have even the remotest fear of heights: This is the world’s longest skywalk, which recently opened in China. The skywalk allows crazy people to walk 87 feet off a cliff for spectacular vomit-inducing views. Don’t worry, it’s only about a half-mile down to the valley floor.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Article: Samsung will make its smartphone chips available to developers of wearables, drones, and more

Smartphones, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart washing machines. Samsung Electronics wants to put a chip in everything it makes—and in things made by other companies, too. The world's largest smartphone maker today debuted a new series of all-in-one chip modules, called Artik, that help devel...

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NVIDIA's GRID cloud gaming service gets 1080p 60 FPS streaming

NVIDID GRID GROUND UP

NVIDIA just flipped on a major upgrade for its GRID cloud gaming service: Full 1080p support at a blistering 60 frames per second. That's the same resolution and frame rate as many games running on the Xbox One and PS4, and it's pretty much the gold standard for PC gamers. And most importantly for NVIDIA, the update makes it the first company to offer game streaming at such a high resolution over the internet. To take advantage of the new streaming feature, you'll need to grab one of the company's SHIELD gaming devices (either the original handheld console or its gaming tablet), sign up for the SHIELD Hub beta group and have at least a 30 Mbps internet connection. We'd imagine it'll likely be a compelling draw for the company's upcoming SHIELD Android set-top box.

So far, NVIDIA is offering around 35 games for free streaming over GRID, including Ultra Street Fighter 4 and Batman: Arkham Origins. Come June, it'll also debut a premium option (no, we don't have pricing details yet).

While you can get 1080p/60p game streaming within your local network in a variety of ways -- including Nvidia's own GeForce Experience offering on PCs and Valve's Steam platform -- offering it remotely over the internet will be the holy grail for plenty of game companies. At this point, Valve's got a major head start -- and it's still making progress. The company also announced today that it's opening up two new GRID data centers in the southwestern US and Central Europe. It's currently running six data centers around the world, offering GRID to gamers in 20 countries.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Article: This Crazy Camera Rig Takes Wildly Realistic 3D Pictures

Welcome to the (almost) holodeck We've all seen basic 3D pictures before. There are those distorted picture-globes you can take with your phone, or Google's Street View photospheres. They're impressive in their own way, but they're just 2D images arranged in a slightly 3D-ish manner. Pretty, but ...

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