I want one.
Bump.
Walk over the Manzano Mountains about 5 miles directly east and have a beer at Slim's house.
I've seen them strobing a big green laser skyward at times. I've seen it up close too, doing some unrelated work at that end of the base.
3.5 meters aperture is 35 times larger than the 10 cm aperture need to get 1 arcsecond of angular resolution, so its diffraction-limited resolution is 1/35 arcsecond. Suppose the orbiter flew directly overhead at an altitude of 210,000 feet, or 70,000 yards. As rifle shooters know, 1 minute of arc is about 1" at 100 yards, and a second being 1/60 of a minute, would be an inch at 60 x 100 = 6000 yards. 1/35 of a second would be an inch at 35 x 6000 = 210,000 yards. Since the orbiter was three times closer, "only" 70,000 yards away, the picture should contain details to 1/3 inch scale.
In fact, the orbiter was not overhead and also not as low as 210,000 feet, so the distance was greater. Even three times greater, the resolution would still be on the 1" scale, assuming no atmospheric distortions. Typically, the best atmosphere limits resolution to about 0.1 arc seconds, 3.5 times worse than the 1/35 second just calculated. So the picture would then show details down to 3.5" size scale, which is smaller than the size of a single tile.
Amazing considering the lousy web cam corders NASA uses to document their launches!
My kid is 10 and is quite good at video cam work with my little Sony.
NASA should hire him to setup a series of cameras to document Shuttle launches as their PHDs seem incapable of doing it!
Great info. Thanks for posting this. Where, but FreeRepublic can you find all this usful info so quickly.