Signal Cleaner Creates Clearer Satellite Images

A new component created by Morrison Fellowship Prize winner Albert Mufflin has enabled astronomers to gain more resolution from images captured by satellite arrays. Eschewing more modern approaches, Dr. Mufflin created a device that passes the signals through an analog array made of giant capacitors and resistors that matches and filters out background radiation from space.

Though the same results can be produced digitally, the computational power is often unfeasible for most systems. Dr. Mufflin’s process records a realtime signal of background radiation at the time the signal is being processed and recreates it within the array, using the realtime pattern to mask out the background radiation and produce images that are 15 to 20 times cleaner than those without any kind of processing.