Femtophotography!

[mzungu]

Science is a wondrous thing! Anyone who has not watched this must do so. It is mind boggling and very good science indeed: ENJOY!

1,000,000,000,000 Frames/Second Photography - Ramesh Raskar - YouTube

 

[Cute Tink]

This was absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

 

[razeontherock]

Very cool! Watching a bullet travel that distance would take a year

 

[Wiccan_Child]

It's very, very cool, though it looks like post-processing is used to clear up the images - it's not actually as simple as a high-speed camera.

But maybe it is

 

[pgp_protector]

Website on Femtophotography
Visualizing Light at Trillion FPS, Camera Culture, MIT Media Lab

How can one take a photo of photons in motion at a trillion frames per second?
We use a pico-second accurate detector. We use a special imager called a streak tube that behaves like an oscilloscope with corresponding trigger and deflection of beams. A light pulse enters the instrument through a narrow slit along one direction. It is then deflected in the perpendicular direction so that photons that arrive first hit the detector at a different position compared to photons that arrive later. The resulting image forms a "streak" of light. Streak tubes are often used in chemistry or biology to observe milimeter sized objects but rarely for free space imaging.