2012/02/01 by Keith S. Cover, Cover, Keith S.
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1202.0268
openalex publication_date 2012/02/01 · openalex created_date 2022/09/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
While fully automated methods for detecting faint moving objects in\nastronomical images - such as Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) - are constantly\nimproving, visual detection still has a role to play especially when the fixed\nbackground is cluttered with stars. Color intensity projections (CIPs) using\nhue cycling - which combines a sequence of greyscale images into a single color\nimage - aids in the visual detection of moving objects by highlighting them\nusing color in an intuitive way. To demonstrate the usefulness of CIPs in\ndetecting faint moving objects a sequence of 16 images from the SuprimeCam\ncamera of the Subaru telescope were combined into a CIPs image. As well has\nmaking even faint moving objects easier to visually detect against a cluttered\nbackground, CCD artefacts were also more easily recognisable. The new Hyper\nSuprimeCam for the Subaru telescope - which will allow many short exposure\nimages to be acquired with little dead time between images - should provide\nideal data for use with the CIPs algorithm. In addition, the current search for\nKBOs to be targeted by the New Horizon's spacecraft after its flyby of Pluto\nprovides an excellent test case for the state of the art in faint moving object\ndetection against a cluttered background.\n