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Sky glow with a Digital Camera

Abhijit Kar Gupta Department of Physics, Panskura Banamali College, West Bengal, India.

Introduction: This project is aimed to have an idea of average light intensity level of sky (sky glow), created particularly by the artificial lights, while one intends to focus on a star and photograph it. At night, bright city lights, moon light or other constant light sources, however strong or weak, may obscure the distant and faint stars. This makes a problem of identifying constellations very difficult. It is important to know the background light before we wish to measure the brightness of a faint object like a dim star. This work shows how we can measure the amount of background light (sky glow) in the night sky. It can be a great way for us to readily compare the star viewing quality at horizons and on Zeniths, at different locations, or at the same location but at different times of the year. An experienced sky watcher can estimate the amount of sky glow in a given location by merely looking at the features of the night sky over there which can and cannot be visible. Astrophysicists have already tried to measure the sky glow but that requires a familiarity with the night sky. For the amateur astronomers or a beginner in sky watching, one will not have that knowledge of using that scale of estimating sky glow. This project shows how we may use a digital camera to get a quantitative measure of sky glow. In other way, we are basically testing the cameras dynamic range, i.e., the response to different light levels. We can use the information we collect in this project to find out what stars we would expect to see in a new location, after taking a reading in the new location with our digital camera. For this work, we have taken the measurements in the day light condition.
Basic facts about a Digital Camera:

The brightness or the amount of light (or photons) picked up by a camera corresponds to exposure. The exposure, E of the source to the detector of the digital camera is defined by the equation: , (1) where is the intensity of the light reaching the camera sensor and t is the integration time (generally expressed as a shutter speed). The intensity is a function of the size of the aperture of the lens, i.e. the size of the opening in front of the detector through which the light passes. ( ), (2) where is the aperture setting.
Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.] Page 1

What is F-number in a Camera?

In Optical instruments, like Camera, the f-number (sometimes called focal ratio, f-ratio, f-stop, or relative aperture) expresses the diameter of the aperture (or opening through which light enters in terms of the focal length of the lens (or lens combination). The f-number (a dimensionless number) is the focal length ( ) divided by the "effective" aperture diameter ( ):

By convention, "f/" followed by a number is treated as a single symbol; for example, if the focal length is 8 times the pupil diameter, the f-number is f/8. The greater the f-number, the less light per unit area reaches the image plane of the system; the amount of light transmitted to the film (or sensor) decreases with the f-number squared. Doubling the f-number increases the necessary exposure time by a factor of four.

[Photo Courtesy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number]

What is Pixel?
In a digital image, a pixel (or picture element) is a single point or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device. It is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled. Each pixel has its own address i.e. the coordinates. Pixels are normally arranged in a two-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares. The intensity of each pixel is variable. In colour image systems, a colour is typically represented by three component intensities such as red, green and blue.

What the image processor software does?

Colour digital images are made of pixels. Pixels are made of combinations of primary colours (RGB).

Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.]

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But when the photo is taken in black and white (or monochrome or single colour), we call this gray scale (or grey scale) digital image in which the value of each pixel carries only intensity information. Images of this kind are composed only of shades of gray, varying from black at the weakest intensity to white at the strongest. For colour photography, the concept of channel is introduced which is the gray scale image of the same size as a color image, made of just one of these primary colors. For example, an image from a standard digiatal camera will have a red, green and blue channel. A gray scale image has just one channel.

In a colour photo, the colour of each pixel is produced by some combination of the primary colours red, green and blue (RGB). Each of the colours have a brightness value that ranges from 0 to 255 for a digital image. The image processor (ImageJ) software estimates each of the RGB brightness values from an image and converts them into a gray scale image which means it converts the intensity information of each of the separate colours into the average intensity of one colour (gray) and counts how many of the pixels are there at each level from 0 to 255. The software produces a histogram (a distribution of Pixel number vs. Strength of brightness). This is called RGB Histogram.

[Photo Courtesy: www.cambridgeincolour.com]

Instruments and accessories:

1. Digital Camera (We used a Digital SLR Nikon D90 camera, a 18-55 mm Lens.) 2. A Tripod/ Stand for the camera to be fitted over it. 3. A sheet of white paper to be pasted on a wall where the wall is uniformly illuminated by the indirect sunlight. 4. A Computer (We used a computer with Windows7 Operating system installed in it.) 5. An image processing software (We used ImageJ software that is freely downloadable from the internet) 6. A software to plot the data (We used ORIGIN software for this purpose.)

Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.]

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Procedures:
We have used a Digital SLR Camera: Nikon D90 and an 18-55 mm Lens fitted with this. First, we paste a sheet of white paper on a wall which is uniformly illuminated by indirect sunlight. Mount the camera on a stand and that is placed at a distance from the wall so that the white paper completely fills the field of view. Put the camera in manual mode (M) by rotating the jog dial of the camera. In this way, the three parameters ISO, Aperture (A) and Shutter speed (T) can be controlled as we wish. The camera is also set in a manual focus mode. Since in the autofocus mode, it is difficult to focus on the white sheet of paper. Instead, we put a small cross by a pen on the sheet and try to focus that manually by rotating the lens. Next, we set the cameras sensitivity to ISO 200 or 250. The aperture is next set to a fixed value F.6 or 8 or 10 Then we take a series of photos for a fixed ISO value and aperture by varying the shutter speed control nob. We obtain shots for T = 1/4000, 1/3200, 1/20001, 2 s etc. The above measurements are repeated several times at different settings. We have to take care that the available level of light that is the light condition remains the same. The photos are then uploaded in a computer using preinstalled software. The uploaded photos are now analyzed through previously installed image processing software, ImageJ. The image processing software provides us the mean pixel intensity of each photo. (We can also have other information like the min, the max, the standard deviation and the mode.) A table is prepared to note down the mean pixel intensity of each shot with respect to the shutter speed. Next, we make a graph of mean intensity against the shutter speed using a graphics software, ORIGIN.

The Camera: (Nikon D90)

Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.]

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Measurements are done for ISO=200, F5.6

Sl No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. Shutter Speed (s) Mean Pixel intensity 0.00025 0.0003125 0.0004 0.0005 0.000625 0.0008 0.001 0.00125 0.0015625 0.002 0.0025 0.003125 0.004 0.005 0.00625 0.008 0.01 0.0125 0.0167 0.02 0.025 0.033 0.04 0.05 0.067 0.077 0.10 0.125 0.167 0.20 0.25 0.333 0.40 0.50 0.625 0.769 1.0 1.3 1.6 2.0 2.5 3.0 4.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.001 2.004 2.029 2.248 2.753 3.522 4.922 6.966 9.674 12.598 15.333 19.397 24.156 30.380 38.341 48.512 60.911 74.600 87.699 100.321 112.354 126.851 139.493 151.167 163.313 176.618 190.104 203.432 215.696 226.561 235.886 244.139 252.317 254.584 254.907 254.996 255.0 255.0 255.0

Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.]

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References:

This project is based on an article in Sky & Telescope magazine: Flanders, T., 2006. "Measuring Skyglow with Digital Cameras," Sky & Telescope, February, 2006: 99104. Such measurements are done before. See: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fairprojects/project_ideas/Astro_p022.shtml NOVAC, date unknown. "John Bortle's Light Pollution Scale," Northern Virginia Astronomy Club [accessed April 2, 2007] http://www.novac.com/lp/def.php.

For free download of the ImageJ software: http://imagej.en.softonic.com/ For learning about digital camera and photography: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ For Camera related concepts, Wikipedia links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number

Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com [Written in the interest of students.]

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