Cheap "lucky Imaging" Rivals Adaptive Optics, UK stargazers enjoy 'Lucky' break Options

[tacitus]

I found this article a few days ago on the BBC News website:

UK astronomers are finding new stars in the sky using a remarkable low-cost camera technique. Known as Lucky Imaging, it has helped the Cambridge team overcome the problem of turbulence in the atmosphere which makes stars twinkle and hard to see.

The group's camera takes millions of images very quickly in the hope that just a few are not blurred. The scientists say the clearest pictures are as sharp as those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Lucky Imaging is an approach previously only used by amateurs, who cannot afford the imaging methods now used on the world's most sophisticated telescopes. Governments around the world have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on Active and Adaptive Optics, which use a complicated system of mirrors and computers to get detailed pictures.

But the Institute of Astronomy project has so far cost just £20,000.

Click this link for the rest of the article and some video.

There is a lot more information at the Lucky Imaging website. Check it out.

Now, to my purely amateur mind, this strikes me as revolutionary. They are claiming that Lucky Imaging can equal or even better Adaptive Optics in many cases, and at a tiny fraction of the cost of installing and operating the equipment.

Now of course, if you have to "throw away" 90% or more of your images, then your going to need longer exposures to see the faintest objects, but for many situations, lucky imaging would appear to be a no-brainer considering the cost.

Is this merely hype or are we soon going to be able to get cut-price Hubble-like clarity from telescopes that install their own LI instruments?