24 Canon lenses strapped together with the power of a refracting telescope 1.8 meters in diameter.
An international team of researchers has bundled groups of 24 Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 lenses together into what they call the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in order to capture photos of distant stars.
The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is a telescope that is equipped with multiple Canon 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses. The telescope array was designed in 2013 by the team, also named Project Dragonfly, which is an international research team from Yale University and the University of Toronto. The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is capable of capturing images of galaxies that are so faint and large that they had escaped detection by even the largest conventional telescopes. Its mission is to study the low surface brightness universe to elucidate the nature of dark matter and to utilize the concept of distributed telescopes.
“The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is the pre-eminent survey telescope for finding faint, diffuse objects in the night sky,” the reseachers explain. “It has enabled us to discover ultra-diffuse galaxies and other low-surface brightness phenomena—rendering images that deepen our understanding of how galaxies are formed and providing key insights into the nature of dark matter.”
