There are plenty of incredible macro shots of settled snowflakes, captured milliseconds before they diminish and melt. But a team of atmospheric scientists has now documented them in freefall using a Nasa and army-funded camera, in order to gather data that will help improve radar communications during snowstorms.
Tim Garrett and Cale Fallgatter of the University of Utah spent three years developing the Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC), which takes photos from three angles using three cameras positioned in a circle -- a 5-mexapixal model and two 1.2-megapixel cameras. Together the cameras capture images of precipitation in the air -- including snowflakes of between 100 micrometres and 3cm -- with a resolution of between 9 and 40 micrometres, at a speed of one-40,000th of a second. Infrared motion sensors trigger the snapshots, picking up any change in surrounding ambient light, and measure the speed at which flakes fall.
By: Liat Clark, Edited by: Ian Steadman
Continue reading...Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/10/3d-snowflake-photos
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