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NASA scientists have demonstrated FluidCam as a drone based solution to provide sharp, clear imagery of coral reefs from a drone's eye view.
Watch the video, write your own transcripts, summaries and criticisms in the comments. It's image processing, it's drone based, they're working toward making it satellite based. I want to know how well it deals with moving objects in the field of view (like fish), but now that the reefs are mostly dead or dying I guess there aren't that many fish on them to worry about anymore? There certainly weren't any fish in the pictures on the video.
Bonus points to the first comment that links to some hard science papers on the topic, the link above is just a NASA "gee isn't this cool" video.
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FluidCam - Seeing Through Wavy Surfaces Clearly
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Everything you know is wrong!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday July 23 2018, @06:47PM (6 children)
Actually, i don't think that sats are the right application here, because you need really high resolution pictures of the waves (which also means very little wind, rendering it only useful for fixed underwater objects you can observe on the best day).
A helicopter or plane would be as good as a drone, but cover and cost more per hour, which would take from the "I have to stay onsite to observe the coral reefs for a few weeks" budget.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 23 2018, @06:50PM (5 children)
That was my point about the drones - they're photographing from a few feet above wave height, they've got thousands if not millions of pixels to process per wave. From satellite altitude I don't _think_ we've got that kind of resolution available - maybe with telescope optics?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Alfred on Monday July 23 2018, @08:09PM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @08:38PM
Me!! I don't believe it, I mean Google has billions and money can buy everything!!
Oh right, satellite cameras. Ok, the US gov probably doesn't permit Google the same level of optics up there. I'm sure Google could get a satellite built, but launched is another story.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 23 2018, @09:05PM
The good stuff in Google earth is collected from Cessnas and similar low flying aircraft, generally for tax collectors and wildlife surveys.
Used to be that you could look at a remote island that nobody cares about and see what the satellite resolution looked like, now it seems that all islands have had high resolution aerial imaging done.
If you look at a small town in Siberia like: https://goo.gl/maps/QxqsbEgXvMM2 [goo.gl] you can see the resolution switch from airplane to satellite when you get far enough downriver from the town.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday July 23 2018, @09:34PM (1 child)
The optics are pretty easy.
The atmosphere's a bitch.
Ask your friendly neighborhood giant telescope operator about it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Monday July 23 2018, @10:36PM
Didn't we just have an article about a ground-based telescope that dramatically outperforms Hubble using some kind of dynamic correction?
Seems like such systems could be used to look down at Earth from orbit as well, though the details might need to be reworked.