"Estimating camera parameters from starry night photographs" by Naoto Ishikawa and Yoshinori Dobashi

Article Title

Estimating camera parameters from starry night photographs

Authors

Naoto Ishikawa, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
Yoshinori Dobashi, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

Keywords

astrophotography, constellation, star identification, pattern matching

Abstract

We propose an efficient, specific method for estimating camera parameters from a single starry night image. Such an image consists of a collection of disks representing stars, so traditional estimation methods for common pictures do not work. Our method uses a database, a star catalog, that stores the positions of stars on the celestial sphere. Our method computes magnitudes (i.e., brightnesses) of stars in the input image and uses them to find the corresponding stars in the star catalog. Camera parameters can then be estimated by a simple geometric calculation. Our method is over ten times faster and more accurate than a previous method.