Possible remote thermal finder?

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...clear-air.html

On Jan 21, 2:04*pm, bildan wrote:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...lephoto-lens-s...

Yes! It's always struck me that a little signal processing on the
shimmer you see in telephoto lenses might work to show thermals.
A bit of signal processing would also show birds, gliders, cornstalks,
cu development, and other stuff that the naked eye tends to miss.
Darn day job...

John Cochrane

bildan wrote:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...photo-lens-spo
ts-clear-air.html

Crap - they almost stole my idea! ;-)

Seriously though, I had been thinking of using a normal video camera with
changing focus to check for dust sparkle at different ranges and do frame
comparisons. Take two (or more) snapshots at each focus range. Subtract out
image from previous focus range (trying to eliminate the roughly constant
out of focus "blur" of the background) to leave only spots in the new focus
range that are likely to be dust particles. Do this at least twice, waiting
some time T between frames. Use a heuristic to pair up pixels that appear
to represent the same particle in both frames but have moved. Compute speed
of movement of particles based on focus range, time T, and subtended arc
the particles appear to have moved. You now have an estimate for wind
speeds and directions normal to your view line at that distance.

The above doesn't appear to be what Boeing has in mind; they appear to be
using distortions of the distant background itself.

On Jan 21, 4:36*pm, Jim Logajan wrote:
bildan wrote:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...photo-lens-spo
ts-clear-air.html

Crap - they almost stole my idea! ;-)

Seriously though, I had been thinking of using a normal video camera with
changing focus to check for dust sparkle at different ranges and do frame
comparisons. Take two (or more) snapshots at each focus range. Subtract out
image from previous focus range (trying to eliminate the roughly constant
out of focus "blur" of the background) to leave only spots in the new focus
range that are likely to be dust particles. Do this at least twice, waiting
some time T between frames. Use a heuristic to pair up pixels that appear
to represent the same particle in both frames but have moved. Compute speed
of movement of particles based on focus range, time T, and subtended arc
the particles appear to have moved. You now have an estimate for wind
speeds and directions normal to your view line at that distance.

The above doesn't appear to be what Boeing has in mind; they appear to be
using distortions of the distant background itself.

My impression,(could be wrong) is that they are using a sharp horizon
line to look for distortions due to air density variations. If so,
that shouldn't be a problem in the clearer air of the west since we
fly in daylight hours below cloudbase. It appears to use only a
standard high resolution camera and some heavy image processing
software.

On Jan 21, 6:16*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
On Jan 21, 2:04*pm, bildan wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...lephoto-lens-s...

Yes! It's always struck me that a little signal processing on the
shimmer you see in telephoto lenses might work to show thermals.
A bit of signal processing would also show birds, gliders, cornstalks,
cu development, and other stuff that the naked eye tends to miss.
Darn day job...

John Cochrane

The idea of a remote thermal finder is already being worked on by a
very distinguished scientist who lives and fly's @ the best soaring
center on the planet earth.
My money is on him.

On 1/21/2011 5:53 PM, mpcehand wrote:
On Jan 21, 6:16 pm, John
wrote:
On Jan 21, 2:04 pm, wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...lephoto-lens-s...

Yes! It's always struck me that a little signal processing on the
shimmer you see in telephoto lenses might work to show thermals.
A bit of signal processing would also show birds, gliders, cornstalks,
cu development, and other stuff that the naked eye tends to miss.
Darn day job...

John Cochrane

The idea of a remote thermal finder is already being worked on by a
very distinguished scientist who lives and fly's @ the best soaring
center on the planet earth.
My money is on him.

Pilots in 16 different clubs around the world are now trying to think
who in their club could be working on a remote thermal sensor.

I'm expecting more discussion about which soaring center you could mean,
than about the remote thermal finder.

Personally, my soaring would improve if I could reliably find the
thermal I just flew through.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

Pilots in 16 different clubs around the world are now trying to think
who in their club could be working on a remote thermal sensor.

I'm expecting more discussion about which soaring center you could mean,
than about the remote thermal finder.

Personally, my soaring would improve if I could reliably find the
thermal I just flew through.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)[/quote]

I'm with you Eric, it was there three seconds ago.

Walt Connelly

On Jan 21, 11:54*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:

Pilots in 16 different clubs around the world are now trying to think
who in their club could be working on a remote thermal sensor.


Not this one. Even if you didn't know the poster's name and where he
flies you could make a good guess at his site location from reviewing
the posting history.

Don't know how many other counties he has flown in though or how many
sites he has flown at.

Andy

Personally, my soaring would improve if I could reliably find the
thermal I just flew through.
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

Eric,
Thanks so much for the laugh out loud belly laugh you just caused with
that statement. That comment hits close to home as well. Still
chuckling as I write this.

Bruno - B4

wait I thought thats why everyone is getting PowerFLARMs?