Canon launches a Canon CE-SAT-1 microsatellite emulator so you can take some photos from space

Canon Rumors Guy

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Canon has launched a new site which allows you to shoot photographs with Canon’s $9mil CE-SAT 1 microsatellite, which was launched in 2017 in India.
The CE-SAT 1 satellite is equipped with a modified Canon EOS 5D Mark III and a PowerShot camera for wide-angle lenses. The CE SAT-1 isn’t the smallest microsatellite the Canon has built, there is also the CE SAT-3 which can fit in the palm of your hand.
Canon is spending a lot of R&D on space imaging, and it looks like they’re in it for the long run.
About the Canon CE-SAT-1
CE-SAT-IB is a 67 kilogram microsatellite which can resolve 90 centimeter objects on the ground from space. Additionally, Spaceflight is coordinating the launch of another Canon satellite, CE-SAT-IIB, which is slated to lift off after the CE-SAT-IB mission later in 2020, also aboard an Electron. It will carry three cameras with different resolutions and sensitivities.
Canon has launched a new site that...

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Good on Canon!

We too have been using consumer cameras for space imaging!

We use multiple Canon 1Dc's for OUR Space Photos along with CUSTOM built 4800 mm and 9600 mm All-Acrylic Broadcast Video ZOOM lenses so we can capture EXACTLY what the NROL-71 Satellite can do!

I should note though that we DO HAVE a 148,000 lbs (67,230 KG) SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) spacesplane to launch our imaging systems from so it's kinda not a fair comparison.

In terms of imaging quality, ANY 5D and 1D series camera when mated to high end Canon/Sigma/Zeiss glass is a GREAT SPACE IMAGING OPTION (we have SEEN it work with our own eyes!) You only have to worry about cooling and radiation-hardening the camera and storage media with a nice layer of tungsten on your enclosures and use silicone oil liquid cooling out to a large heat sink to prevent overheating during orbits where the sun is directly shining on the imaging hardware (i.e. all that X-ray and Gamma radiation and heavy-particle bombardment just ain't good for electronics!).

In terms of imaging quality, since I have personally actually SEEN the quality of processed NROL-71 imagery, I would say we are actually even BETTER because we use ADAPTIVE OPTICS and fancy software-based adaptive light-path re-construction (which I personally ALL designed and coded by hand the way!) which gets rid of atmospheric and thermal distortion from our imagery!

NROL-71 has a 6 inch (15-cm) per pixel resolution while on a practical light-path-physics-basis I can get down to about 4 inch (10 cm) per pixel resolution. AND WE DO NOT NEED a 2.4 metre mirror since we are using something quite similar to the Fujinon Sports Broadcast Zoom Lenses but using optical-grade ALL-ACRYLIC lens elements along with 960 adjustments per second peizo-electric adaptive optics to control the light path.

AND YOU TOO will be able to access that sort of grid-processing software-based imaging technology when we release our Ultra Media Processing Engine Toolbar with 23 media-centric Applications in ONE place and containing the built-in Pascal-like Multi-platform Cross-Compiler, Cross-Assembler and SDK in a few weeks for a very inexpensive price. (i.e. less than $299 USD one time fee!) --- Think of of it as a combined Adobe Photo + Video Editing Suites + CATIA Engineering + SoftImage + Flame/Inferno + 2D/3D CAD/CAM/Finite Element Analysis + Optical, Magneto, Plasma and Hydrodynamic Physics Simulation + Physics-based 3D Molecular-bond Modeling and Simulation + Mentor Graphics VHDL CPU/DSP/ASIC designer AND the rest of the BackOffice software kitchen sink of software systems thrown in for good measure!

Sooooo, Space Imaging CAN be done using consumer camera and lens hardware (we have proven that ourselves using the Canon 1Dc's in space below and ABOVE 408 km -- aka the ISS -- and at Geosynchronous and Polar orbits!)

In terms of spacecraft to launch from, we do actually have a hardware deployment solution but it looks like we keeping that for ourselves a little while longer BUT it's VAAAASTLY ADVANCED engine technology WILL be released publicly shortly!

We'll see you on Mars or at Kepler 452b (p.s. someone else lives there though even with its 2x gravity, heavy atmosphere, heavily active vulcanism and 120+C surface temps!)

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How am I supposed to enjoy taking snapshots from space when in the back of my mind I know I'm sacrificing dynamic range and suffering with too much red-channel noise compared to the latest gen sensors?

Take shots at full resolution FULL RAW at the highest bit-width per channel (12-bits minimum) and use Nyquist-type resampling by reducing the image EXACTLY by half the number of pixels on the X and Y axis using Lanczos-5 or Lanczos-7 image resampling filters. Then Increase OVERALL image brightness by 15%, increase the deep shadows by 10% to 15%, reduce the bright highlights by between 5% to 15%, add MORE SATURATION (5% to 10% or to personal taste!), then do a colour temperature shift to about 6500 to 7000 K to ensure the image in the white fluffy cloud areas LOOK NICE AND WHITE with LOTS of fluffy detail that you can see. You can THEN reduce the red channel by about 5% on a whole-image RGB adjustment.

After that do a gamma and contrast adjustment and/or mid-tones until you get a nice even Bell Curve on your full image luminance histogram.

FINALLY do an Unsharp Mask using 1.5 pixel radius or more until you see nice extra sharpness in YOUR OBJECT EDGES ONLY to ensure that detail is preserved and/or further enhanced.

Print at 2400 dpi on Photo Glossy or Semi-Gloss Coated Photo Paper on an Epson or Canon 19 by 13 inch pro-level printer (or at 36 by 24 inches OR at a super-size 64 by 48 inches on the super-wide printers) ensuring that Colour Rendition is set to "Perceptual Colour Matching To Your Display" and that Error Diffusion is turned ON and Highest Quality settings are ALSO turned ON. This will take a long time to print from 20 minutes on the 13x19 up to one hour to two hours at the larger print sizes. Use ARCHIVE QUALITY inks only!

I am assuming you are using a tungsten-shielded FULLY SEALED nitrogen-gas enclosed camera cage for your 5D3 when you're in space ???

I'm in an EVA suit with highly dexterous gloves using a VERY NICE external controls interface behind a big RAD-shield so I don't get the direct gamma and hard X-rays on me and my gear ....AND.... that rad shield makes for quite a nice sun-shade too! Otherwise, I usually shoot through a solid sapphire porthole with the handheld 1Dc or via the 3D-XYZ gyro-stabilized WESCAM mount. We got 10 megabits/second download to ground so image transfer speeds back to base is not all that bad.

I do suggest you make sure that you ALWAYS have your "U-Tube" put-on cuz your bathroom breaks while on EVA are REALLY problematic at 500 km+ !!!

Hope your NEXT SET OF Space Shots work out SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER for you with these tips!

:) ;-) :)

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slclick

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But does it have dual card slots? Or the sacrec bird called IBIS? If not.. well you know, the Canon microsatellite photo shooting site is doomed..
Ahem, just open the door and you will see there is 'space' between the two card slots in the 5D3. It doesn't take a degree in science and astronomy to uncover this zenith.
 
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TAF

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In terms of imaging quality, ANY 5D and 1D series camera when mated to high end Canon/Sigma/Zeiss glass is a GREAT SPACE IMAGING OPTION (we have SEEN it work with our own eyes!) You only have to worry about cooling and radiation-hardening the camera and storage media with a nice layer of tungsten on your enclosures and use silicone oil liquid cooling out to a large heat sink to prevent overheating during orbits where the sun is directly shining on the imaging hardware (i.e. all that X-ray and Gamma radiation and heavy-particle bombardment just ain't good for electronics!).

Harry;

The question is - how much tungsten do you need to protect the new generation 5nm process image sensor/electronics (e.g.: the R5)?

Or will they forever be limited to the 5D3 or equivalent?

Which adds an additional thought - if some silicone liquid is all you need to cool things, perhaps the R5sc (silicone cooled) will be right around the corner to make that 8K30 useable?

CES was a little weird this year being all virtual - but it was nice to be able to see ALL the interesting presentations (still watching some now).
 
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Michael Clark

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How am I supposed to enjoy taking snapshots from space when in the back of my mind I know I'm sacrificing dynamic range and suffering with too much red-channel noise compared to the latest gen sensors?

Not to mention the 5D Mark III lacks Canon's flicker reduction feature, so shooting street scenes lit by flickering lighting from space will suck.
 
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Harry;

The question is - how much tungsten do you need to protect the new generation 5nm process image sensor/electronics (e.g.: the R5)?

Or will they forever be limited to the 5D3 or equivalent?

Which adds an additional thought - if some silicone liquid is all you need to cool things, perhaps the R5sc (silicone cooled) will be right around the corner to make that 8K30 useable?

CES was a little weird this year being all virtual - but it was nice to be able to see ALL the interesting presentations (still watching some now).

---

You have to calculate the energy levels of radiation and heavy particle bombardment at geosynchronous orbit (22,000 miles up) which is anywhere from 50 Kilo-electron volts to about 6 mega-electron volts so for Tungsten about 1.5 cm thick works as a good enough radiation shield so as to NOT damage the electronics too much from hard X-rays, gamma radiation or heavy particle bombardment!

In space, bit-flips and CMOS layer ablation is inevitable during normal operation no matter the shielding! So even a very good 1.5 cm thick Tungsten plate will only protect so much. And also that is a VERY VERY HEAVY shielding but when one has access to an actual SSTO spaceplane, delivery to high orbits is no longer an issue!

Even within our Earths magnetosphere which offers quite a LOT of shielding against the solar wind, we still get relatively large amounts of radiation bombardment compared to Earth surface. This amount no matter how much shielding we have, is still quite hazardous long-term to me and my fellow pilots/crew members!

Anyways, in terms of cooling you really CANNOT USE a radiative cooling process in space but rather you use a large cubic metre-sized internal heat sink DESIGNED to hold the number of hours worth of joules you will be emitting as you run your cameras and other sensor gear. When I asked the engineers, they said they use a ceramic aluminum oxide GLASS as the heat sink material enclosed within a thermal insulator for the cameras' and other sensors' heat sinks.

Silicone Thermal Transfer fluid is the lightest and fastest thermal transfer fluid system we could find that will send heat to the heat sinks quickly AND that is also RATED for space environments!

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zim

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Yes but he can't tell you everything about it just yet. However we will all learn about it in the very near future and it will change everything. (That's his forum MO, right?)
True but there is never anything rude or aggressive with his posts i find them very entertaining, I genuinely enjoy them.
 
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