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471 points doener | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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GMoromisato ◴[] No.45957336[source]
This is a classic example of a simple idea that no one had ever done before. The execution was complex, of course, and Andrew McCarthy is one of the most skilled astrophotographers. But once you get the idea, a number of people could have done it--but no one ever did.

Makes you wonder what other similar ideas are out there! You can bet McCarthy is already thinking some.

p.s.: My brush with celebrity is that I saw an Andrew McCarthy post on Quora when he was first getting started with astrophotography and gave him a few tips. Always important to remember that everyone was a beginner at one point: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-pro-tips-for-astrophotog...

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nullhole ◴[] No.45959526[source]
I had an idea for survey planes once. During calibration, they fly grid patterns, basically like a hashmark (#), to get overlapping data for comparison.

Doing that kind of flight at night (makes sense for lidar! not so much for photo..), against a clear sky with at least some stars, and stacking the resulting photos, would give you a grid pattern of green/red/white aircraft running lights in front of the heavens.

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1. mxfh ◴[] No.45963144[source]
The overlapping pattern is! the flight pattern. The overlap is not some calibration artifact, it is the product for any sort of stereo evaluation.
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2. nullhole ◴[] No.45973736[source]
That is the flight pattern used on calibration flights, which are used to generate the internal/external calibration values for the camera / laser installation.

Standard wide area ortho photo collection can be done with a series of parallel lines, as long as there's enough forelap/sidelap between photos. Same for standard wide area lidar collection.