Sheena Patel

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Image Processing Comet Finding Group Supernova

• Sheena Patel
• Keith Hawkins
• Joey Starnes
• Daniel Jacobs

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Introduction

• The goal of this project is to create a suite of
  programs using MATLAB to find possible comets
  from images taken by the SOHO satellite.
• MATLAB- a program that has integrated image
  processing toolboxes.
• Image Processing

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The SOHO Satellite

• SOHO stands for the Solar and Heliospheric
  Observatory.
• SOHO is an international collaboration between
  ESA and NASA
• SOHO studies the Sun from its deep core to the
  solar winds
• SOHO orbits in a special orbit called L1
  Lagrangian point, which allows it to observe the
  sun 24/7
• We used data from the Large Angle and
  Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) to run through
  our programs.

Figure 1 Example input picture Courtesy
of http//sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c
2/1024/latest.html
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General Introduction to Comets
a.
b.

• Comets are small, irregularly shaped astronomical
  bodies
• Most Comets are composed of a mixture of small
  grains and frozen gases.
• Comets have highly eccentric orbits which make
  them extremely bright and visible to the naked
  eye
• Therefore comets have a unique structure built of
  two parts
• Nucleus
• Tail

Figure 2 (a) example of a circle and ellipse.
(B) Structure of a comet Courtesy
of http//www.solarviews.com/eng/comet.htm
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Concepts Behind the Project

• Images coming from LASCO, once masked, have
  bright dots that can either be stars or comets
• In order to extract the comets from the
  background stars the project makes use running
  images in sets of four and the program will watch
  the dots to see which dots are not moving in
  harmony with the background dots or stars

Figure 3 picture of SOHO comet Courtesy
of http//www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/26/comet
.contest/
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Procedure Step 1

• Get pictures from directory
• Isolate date and time from picture name
• Calculate time between images
• Store date, time, and elapsed time for later use

See Animations
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Procedure Step 2

• involves using MATLAB to determine the
  coordinates of all of the bright spots on the
  masked images.
• writing code to seek out all the bright spots

Figure 4 Masked SOHO image
See Animations
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Procedure Step 3

• takes the output of step 2
• takes multiple masked images and calculates
  distances
• applies distance constraints to make a list of
  possible trajectories

See Animations
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Procedure Step 4

• Take input of points in 2 images
• Connect into paths through 4 images
• Check for consistent distance
• Check for angles and linear relationship

See Animations
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Procedure Step 5

• Take in coordinates of comet paths
• Make circle around coordinates
• Change contrast inside circle
• Results in highlighted comet

See Animations
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Procedure Step 6

• Main Loop
• Connects previous five steps
• Coordinates inputs and outputs
• Prints final comet images

See Animations
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Applications

• Program used to find comets
• Increased knowledge of galactic neighborhood
• NASA can keep tabs on objects close to earth
• 3. Programs can be modified for other purposes
• .

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Conclusions

• Although there was not enough time to go through
  new data, the programs that was written by team
  supernova was able to identify previously known
  comets from SOHO data!!

Figure Picture of a SOHO comet Courtesy
of http//www.esa.int/esaCP/ESA26YTM5JC_FeatureWe
ek_1.html
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Movie Animation
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Comets from May 6, 2005
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2
3
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??????ANY QUESTIONS??????