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The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is expanding to have 168 Canon 400mm f/2.8L IS USM II lenses pointed at the sky

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Project Dragonfly, designed by a team from Yale University and the University of Toronto in 2013 is an attempt to capture the darkest parts of the sky that are so faint that they’ve managed to escape the gaze of more conventional telescopes – even the really huge ones. The design was built using an array of 3 Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM II lenses to begin with in what they called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array.

It was expanded to 10 lenses and in 2015, Canon supplied 40 more EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM II lenses to the team, bringing their total up to 48 in two 24-lens units. Now, with some more help from Canon, the team is going to put together four more of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array units for a total of 168 400mm f/2.8 lenses pointed towards the sky to capture the darkest galaxies in the universe.

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Irix teases new “Dragonfly” lens to be announced at Photokina

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It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new lens from Swiss lens company, Irix. In fact, while they’ve been adding a lot to their Edge filter system, we haven’t seen a new lens since Photokina 2016 when they showed off the 45mm f/1.4 – a lens that still doesn’t exist.

But it looks like they’re teasing a new one for an announcement at Photokina 2018, though. At least, that’s what these three short videos suggest. All we really know is that it’s called “Dragonfly”, but it might be a 150mm macro lens.

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The Dragonfly Telescope Uses Ten Canon 400mm f/2.8 Lenses to Detect Faint Galaxies

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While telescopes do a great job gathering light and obtaining images of ridiculously distant objects, even the largest and most advanced units are assumed to be unable to detect certain faint structures due scattered light which may be hiding them.

An awkward looking, multi-lens array was built to solve the problem – the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Using ten of Canon’s finest 400mm lenses, the Dragonfly’s design significantly reduces scattered light and internal reflections within the optics, allowing ultra-low surface brightness astronomy at visible wavelengths.

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