fairfolio
Saved Projects

Digital Telescope Utilizing Tomography

CSEF · 2005 Electricity & Electronics

Guanxiong Mao, Maxwell Radin, Daniel Ram · Homestead High School, Cupertino

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of the project was to construct a prototype of a digital tomographic telescope that could capture images of targets as far as one hundred feet away as an inexpensive alternative to telescopes that use lenses and mirrors. Methods/Materials The mechanism consisted of an illuminated target, a rotating disk with a slit in it, and a light sensing unit that recorded the intensity of light passing through the slit as the disk moved. A series of complex computer programs processed the data using several algorithms based on linear algebra to produce an image. Results The prototype was able to image simple shapes as well as complex patterns of geometric arrangements. Conclusions/Discussion The project demonstrated that telescopic tomography can be used to capture images digitally. Theoretically, the imaging power can be increased by increasing the size and precision of the apparatus. This technology could be applied to many fields, such as astronomy, topography, and military intelligence.

Summary statement

The aim of the project was to build a digital telescope that uses tomography instead of lenses or mirrors.

Help received

Father (Lon Radin) helped construct electronics and operate the mechanical components

Competition history

  • CSEF 2005 Electricity & Electronics · Entry S0711

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google