Astronaut Photography: Handheld Camera Imagery from Low Earth Orbit

Stefanov, William L.; Evans, Cynthia A.; Runco, Susan; Wilkinson, M. Justin; Willis, Kim

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-7671-0_39

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Astronaut photography from various NASA missions, including the Space Shuttle missions and the International Space Station (ISS), have long been used for observing a variety of environmental phenomena from low Earth orbits (Stefanov et al, 2017). The database of these photos is extensive, includes both daytime and nighttime photos, and is freely accessible via the Gateway of Astronaut Photography of the Earth (https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/).…”

Section: Night-time Astronauts Photographsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future

Levin

Kyba

Zhang³

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing of Environment

555

247

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Remote sensing of night light emissions in the visible band offers a unique opportunity to directly observe human activity from space. This has allowed a host of applications including mapping urban areas, estimating population and GDP, monitoring disasters and conflicts. More recently, remotely sensed night lights data have found use in understanding the environmental impacts of light emissions (light pollution), including their impacts on human health. In this review, we outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state of the art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights. While the paper mainly focuses on space borne remote sensing, ground based sensing of night-time brightness for studies on astronomical and ecological light pollution, as well as for calibration and validation of space borne data, are also discussed. Although the development of night light sensors lags behind day-time sensors, we demonstrate that the field is in a stage of rapid development.The worldwide transition to LED lights poses a particular challenge for remote sensing of night lights, and strongly highlights the need for a new generation of space borne night lights instruments. This work shows that future sensors are needed to monitor temporal changes during the night (for example from a geostationary platform or constellation of satellites), and to better understand the angular patterns of light emission (roughly analogous to the BRDF in daylight sensing). Perhaps most importantly, we make the case that higher spatial resolution and multispectral sensors covering the range from blue to NIR are needed to more effectively identify lighting technologies, map urban functions, and monitor energy use.

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Section: Night-time Astronauts Photographsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future

Levin

Kyba

Zhang³

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing of Environment

555

247

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…the presence or not of obstacles, single versus multiple scattering, particular expressions for the molecular and aerosol concentration profiles, assumed phase scattering function, etc). Ground radiance data with medium to high spatial resolution and nearly worldwide coverage are available, among other data sources, from the legacy archives of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) (Elvidge et al, 1999;Cinzano & Elvidge, 2004;Hsu et al, 2015), the current Suomi-NPP VIIRS-DNB datasets Cao & Bai, 2014;Elvidge et al, 2017;Earth Observation Group, 2018), and the International Space Station (ISS) DSLR images Sánchez de Miguel, 2016;Stefanov et al, 2017), the first two panchromatic (0.5-0.9 m band) and the latter trichromatic RGB.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Fourier-transform calculation of artificial night sky brightness maps

Bará

Falchi²,

Furgoni³

et al. 2020

Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer

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Light pollution poses a growing threat to optical astronomy, in addition to its detrimental impacts on the natural environment, the intangible heritage of humankind related to the contemplation of the starry sky and, potentially, on human health. The computation of maps showing the spatial distribution of several light pollution related functions (e.g. the anthropogenic zenithal night sky brightness, or the average brightness of the celestial hemisphere) is a key tool for light pollution monitoring and control, providing the scientific rationale for the adoption of informed decisions on public lighting and astronomical site preservation. The calculation of such maps from satellite radiance data for wide regions of the planet with sub-kilometric spatial resolution often implies a huge amount of basic pixel operations, requiring in many cases extremely large computation times. In this paper we show that, using adequate geographical projections, a wide set of light pollution map calculations can be reframed in terms of two-dimensional convolutions that can be easily evaluated using conventional fast Fourier-transform (FFT) algorithms, with typical computation times smaller than 10 −6 s per output pixel.

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“…However, most operating spaceborne radiometers with sufficient nighttime sensitivity are panchromatic [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], lacking the required spectral discrimination for assessing health effects. One way to partially overcome this limitation is the use of RGB imagery, such as the well-known images of the Earth at night obtained by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) with off-the-shelf digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLR) from the Crew Earth Observations facility (CEO) [ 31 ]. After suitable camera calibration, the DSLR raw images allow the radiance reaching the ISS from the streetlights located within the camera field-of-view to be determined, with a spatial resolution of the order of tens of meters, and a limited but extremely useful RGB multi-spectral capability [ 32 , 33 ] (see also [ 34 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Human Photoreceptoral Inputs from Night-Time Lights Using RGB Imaging Photometry

et al. 2019

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Night-time lights interact with human physiology through different pathways starting at the retinal layers of the eye; from the signals provided by the rods; the S-, L- and M-cones; and the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGC). These individual photic channels combine in complex ways to modulate important physiological processes, among them the daily entrainment of the neural master oscillator that regulates circadian rhythms. Evaluating the relative excitation of each type of photoreceptor generally requires full knowledge of the spectral power distribution of the incoming light, information that is not easily available in many practical applications. One such instance is wide area sensing of public outdoor lighting; present-day radiometers onboard Earth-orbiting platforms with sufficient nighttime sensitivity are generally panchromatic and lack the required spectral discrimination capacity. In this paper, we show that RGB imagery acquired with off-the-shelf digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLR) can be a useful tool to evaluate, with reasonable accuracy and high angular resolution, the photoreceptoral inputs associated with a wide range of lamp technologies. The method is based on linear regressions of these inputs against optimum combinations of the associated R, G, and B signals, built for a large set of artificial light sources by means of synthetic photometry. Given the widespread use of RGB imaging devices, this approach is expected to facilitate the monitoring of the physiological effects of light pollution, from ground and space alike, using standard imaging technology.

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Astronaut Photography: Handheld Camera Imagery from Low Earth Orbit

Cited by 5 publications

References 19 publications

Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future

Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future

Fast Fourier-transform calculation of artificial night sky brightness maps

Evaluating Human Photoreceptoral Inputs from Night-Time Lights Using RGB Imaging Photometry

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