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Astronomy and Cosmology
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Diffraction Effects and Artifacts in Telescopes like the JWST
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[QUOTE="sophiecentaur, post: 6816064, member: 199289"] [USER=114325]@collinsmark[/USER] thanks for that information. It's interesting that the efficiency seems to be so high. However, isn't there something fundamental that means having gain too high will just increase the effect of shot noise wasting one bit of bit depth? I do more or less take your point about equating a lsb to the arrival of one (or two) photons if the gain is suitable. I don't understand how the result of such an arbitrary set of events would be relevant to the statistics of real events producing an identifiable spike pattern on a regular basis. Your instance doesn't produce a spike; it triggers a single pixel. You seem to suggest that a bright star would not be expected to produce a 'clearer' pattern of photons arriving at the sensor than a (very) dim one. I know that quantum effects / statistics of small numbers can sometimes give surprising results but normal principles of signal to noise ratio start to kick in at low numbers. Relative numbers of 'events' still tend to correlate with the continuum of analogue values that diffraction integrals give you. That should be no surprise to anyone. That large image of many stars shows long spikes for many stars that are not actually near saturation but the fainter ones do not have identifiable spikes. When the absolute value of the spike pattern from a low intensity star falls below 1 increment then probability of it causing a hit gets less and less. I really don't see why this isn't obvious. [/QUOTE]
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Diffraction Effects and Artifacts in Telescopes like the JWST
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