Shift the sensor, track star movement

[space-time]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1107/110708...report.asp


Japanese website DCWatch has published a test of the star tracking feature of Pentax's O-GPS module. The Astro Tracer mode uses the GPS coordinates to calculate the camera's movement relative to the stars, then utilizes the camera's image stabilization system to shift the sensor to track that movement. The report, which is a little tricky to follow in its Google-translated form, includes several example images, showing the system's effectiveness. (From DCWatch)

[cbelt3]

Gawd I hate this. The amount of time I spent writing code and reviewing physics to get an automated cinetheodolite to track stars and satellites, and then take precise measurements and determine lat/long/alt down to 1 meter resolution in the pre GPS days.... well, it was over 50,000 lines of code.

I wonder if they've cribbed some of my 1980's era code for this purpose. I *did* release the satellite tracking code as open source, simply because I had added on to someone else's open source code.

Ah well.. At least I can say I did it back when it was very hard !

[Dick Moore]

Kudos to you, cbelt! Recognition here, if nowhere else...

[testcase]

cbelt3; you're a cinetheodolite LEADER!!!! :boink: