Introduction

The observations described in Chapter 3 were of relatively bright stars using a conventional high frame-rate CCD camera. The readout noise present at these high frame rates would have led to poor signal-to-noise ratios for observations of faint sources using this camera.

In Chapter 4, I introduced the characteristics of the new L3Vision CCDs developed by E2V Technologies. The high signal-to-noise performance of these devices at high frame rates and low signal levels should make them ideally suited to the Lucky Exposures method. In this chapter I introduce some preliminary results from observations using L3Vision CCDs at the NOT. Many of these results were also published in Tubbs et al. (2002). These observations indicate that the method has enormous potential for a wide variety of future astronomical programs using low noise cameras. I develop an approach for obtaining high quality Lucky Exposures images from data with low signal-to-noise. The techniques introduced here will be of use in future astronomical programs utilising the Lucky Exposures method.

Observations were carried out using an L3Vision CCD in July 2001, July 2002 and June-July 2003 at the NOT. The limiting magnitude of reference star and isoplanatic angle are investigated in this chapter, and from these the sky coverage of the technique is calculated. A number of high resolution images of globular cluster cores and close binaries are presented, providing a taster of potential future astronomical results. This chapter includes a brief discussion of the astrometric and photometric precision which can be obtained from Lucky Exposures images.