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06/30/09 20:31:30 (7 months ago)
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review: related astrometric calibration work

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  • trunk/documents/theses/dstn/preamble.tex

    r12281 r12282  
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    4243\newcommand{\RA}{\unit{RA}} 
    4344\newcommand{\Dec}{\unit{Dec}} 
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     47\newcommand{\scamp}{{\texttt Scamp}\xspace} 
    4548 
    4649\newcommand{\captionpart}[1]{\textbf{#1}} 
  • trunk/documents/theses/dstn/review.tex

    r12281 r12282  
    910910 
    911911 
     912Extra sources can be due to planets, comets, satellites, or aircraft. 
     913Missing or poorly localized source can be due to imperfections in the 
     914imaging sensor, saturation, cosmic ray interference, or (rarely) 
     915occlusion.  Errors in the image processing that detects sources can 
     916lead to sources being gained or lost.  We call sources that appear in 
     917only the input image or reference catalog \emph{distractors} and 
     918\emph{dropouts}, respectively.  The existence of distractors and 
     919dropouts means that we can never assume that all the objects in the 
     920reference catalog will be contained in an image to be recognized, or 
     921vice versa. 
     922 
     923 
    912924The images to be recognized are subregions of the sky.  Image sizes 
    913925range from nearly half the celestial sphere down to $10^{-7}$ of the 
     
    934946 
    935947\comment{ 
    936 An additional challenge in astrometry is that the input image and 
    937 reference catalog may each have fictitious or missing sources. 
    938 Extra sources can be due to planets, comets, satellites, or aircraft. 
    939 Missing or poorly localized source can be due to imperfections in the 
    940 imaging sensor, saturation, cosmic ray interference, or (rarely) 
    941 occlusion.  Errors in the image processing that detects sources can 
    942 lead to sources being gained or lost.  We call sources that appear in 
    943 only the input image or reference catalog \emph{distractors} and 
    944 \emph{dropouts}, respectively.  The existence of dropouts and 
    945 distractors means that we can never assume that all the objects in the 
    946 reference catalog will be contained in the image, or vice versa. 
    947  
    948948There are several useful applications for a blind astrometry solver. 
    949949Most telescopes used by professional astronomers are 
     
    10071007 
    10081008There seem to be two distinct groups of researchers who have worked on 
    1009 astrometry problems.  The first are professional astronomers, whose 
    1010 images are typically of small angular extent, long exposure time, and 
    1011 high quality.  They typically assume that there is a good initial 
    1012 guess of the astrometry and the goal is to produce a very accurate 
    1013 astrometric solution, including image distortion.  The second group of 
    1014 researchers are spacecraft engineers who want to use astrometry to 
    1015 estimate the attitude of the camera (and the spacecraft to which it is 
    1016 attached).  Here the images are of wide angular extent, have short 
     1009astrometric calibration.  The first are professional astronomers, 
     1010whose images are typically of small angular extent, long exposure 
     1011time, and high quality.  They typically assume that there is a good 
     1012initial guess of the astrometry and the goal is to produce a very 
     1013accurate astrometric calibration, including image distortion.  The 
     1014second group of researchers are spacecraft engineers who want to use 
     1015the stars to estimate the attitude of a camera attached to a 
     1016spacecraft.  Here the images are of wide angular extent, have short 
    10171017exposure time, and are very noisy.  Primary concerns include weight, 
    10181018power consumption, and robustness (especially in avoiding false 
     
    10201020possible given the hardware. 
    10211021 
    1022 \subsection{Non-blind astrometry} 
     1022\subsection{Non-blind astrometric calibration} 
    10231023 
    10241024Non-blind astrometry requires that an initial estimate of the image 
    1025 astrometry be provided. 
    1026  
    1027  
    1028 Groth \cite{groth1986} presents an algorithm for matching two lists of 
    1029 coordinates (eg, image coordinates in pixels and reference star 
    1030 coordinates on the celestial sphere), assuming that the lists contain 
    1031 a significant proportion of objects in common.  To compensate for the 
    1032 limited computing resources available at the time, he suggests taking 
    1033 the brightest 20 or 30 objects in each list. 
     1025astrometry be provided.  Groth \cite{groth1986} presents an algorithm 
     1026for matching two lists of coordinates (eg, image coordinates in pixels 
     1027and reference star coordinates on the celestial sphere), assuming that 
     1028the lists contain a significant proportion of objects in common.  With 
     1029the limited computing resources available at the time, he suggests 
     1030taking the brightest 20 or 30 objects in each list. 
    10341031 
    10351032 
    10361033Once the two lists of objects have been compiled and the brightest 
    10371034objects selected, all sets of three objects are enumerated and the 
    1038 triangles they form are described by a scale--, rotation--, and 
    1039 translation--invariant descriptor, composed of the length ratio of the 
     1035triangles they form are described by a scale-, rotation-, and 
     1036translation-invariant descriptor, composed of the length ratio of the 
    10401037longest to shortest edges, plus the cosine between these edges and the 
    10411038\emph{sense} or \emph{parity} of the triangle.  The tolerances 
     
    10491046After triangle features are extracted from both point lists, feature 
    10501047matching is performed by checking whether the distance between each 
    1051 pair of features is less than their corresponding tolerances.  (This 
    1052 process can be accelerated by sorting the features on one of the 
    1053 feature dimensions.)  If multiple matches are found for a particular 
    1054 feature, only the closest is considered.  After all the features have 
    1055 been compared, many correct matches should be found, along with some 
    1056 false matches.  For each match, the difference of the log-perimeters 
    1057 of the two triangles is computed; this gives the relative scale of the 
    1058 two triangles and hence the coordinate frames, assuming the match is 
     1048pair of features is less than their corresponding tolerances.  This 
     1049process is accelerated by sorting the features on one of the feature 
     1050dimensions.  If multiple matches are found for a particular feature, 
     1051only the closest is considered.  After all the features have been 
     1052compared, many correct matches should be found, along with some false 
     1053matches.  For each match, the difference of the log-perimeters of the 
     1054two triangles is computed.  This gives the relative scales of the two 
     1055triangles and hence their coordinate frames, assuming the match is 
    10591056correct.  False matches are rejected by iterative outlier detection: 
    10601057the mean difference of log-perimeters is computed and matches far from 
     
    10701067 
    10711068P\'al and Bakos \cite{pal2006} adapt the triangle-matching approach to 
    1072 images containing many more objects: of order $10^4$.  Since it would 
     1069images containing many more objects (of order $10^4$).  Since it would 
    10731070become prohibitively expensive to enumerate all triangles in such an 
    10741071image, they reduce the number of triangles created by using only the 
     
    10851082stars.  The intent is that if some of the nearby stars are distractors 
    10861083that they will be ignored when the extended triangulations are used. 
    1087 %This extended triangulation skips the nearest set of stars, which creates triangles of larger scale. 
    1088 %The hope is that distractor stars 
    1089 %which should make the algorithm more 
    1090 %robust to distractor stars. 
    10911084 
    10921085\begin{figure} 
    10931086\begin{center} 
    1094 \includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{pal-fig2} 
     1087\includegraphics[width=\figunit]{pal-fig2} 
    10951088\end{center} 
    1096 \caption{The triangle parameterization used by P\'al and Bakos.  This figure is copied from \cite{pal2006} Figure 2.} 
    1097 \label{pal} 
     1089\caption{The triangle parameterization used by P\'al and Bakos.  This 
     1090figure is a reproduction of \fig 2 in \cite{pal2006}.\label{pal}} 
    10981091\end{figure} 
    10991092 
    1100 This paper also introduces a new triangle parameterization which is 
    1101 continuous and sensitive to chirality (parity); see Figure \ref{pal}. 
     1093P\'al and Bakos introduce a new triangle parameterization which is 
     1094continuous and sensitive to chirality (parity); see \figref{pal}. 
    11021095This two-dimensional parameter space is used as the geometric feature 
    1103 space. 
    1104  
    1105 % Noise propagation properties? 
    1106  
    1107 When matching triangles between the two images, they demand a 
     1096space.  When matching triangles between the two images, they demand a 
    11081097\emph{symmetric point match}: each triangle must be the other 
    11091098triangle's nearest neighbour in feature space.  Matching two images is 
    11101099done by creating the lists of triangles and attempting to find 
    1111 symmetric point matches; this process can be accelerated by sorting 
    1112 each list by one of the coordinates.  Each triangle match is 
    1113 considered to be a vote for the correspondence of the three pairs of 
    1114 points composing the triangles.  These votes are accumulated in a 
    1115 sparse matrix where element $(i, j)$ contains the number of votes for 
    1116 a correspondence between object $i$ in the first image and object $j$ 
    1117 in the second image.  After all matches are considered, the top 40\% 
    1118 of the nonzero matrix elements are assumed to contain the true 
     1100symmetric point matches.  This process is accelerated by sorting each 
     1101list by one of the coordinates.  Each triangle match is considered to 
     1102be a vote for the correspondence of the three pairs of points 
     1103composing the triangles.  These votes are accumulated in a sparse 
     1104matrix where element $(i, j)$ contains the number of votes for a 
     1105correspondence between object $i$ in the first image and object $j$ in 
     1106the second image.  After all matches are considered, the top 40\% of 
     1107the nonzero matrix elements are assumed to contain the true 
    11191108correspondences.  A transformation based on these correspondence is 
    11201109computed and the unitarity of the transformation matrix is used to 
    11211110judge whether the match is true or false. 
    11221111 
    1123 %In practice, they only used the extended Delauney triangulation if the regular Delauney 
    1124 %triangulation fails to produce a match. 
    1125  
    1126 %The algorithm was tested on $8\degree \times 8\degree$ images.  The list of reference 
    1127 %stars was generated from the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) \cite{twomass}. 
    1128 %They estimated the magnitude of the reference stars in the bandpass of their images, 
    1129 %and selected the brightest 3000 objects from each. 
    1130  
    11311112 
    11321113A different approach is taken by Kaiser \etal \cite{kaiser1999}.  They 
    11331114assume they are given two lists of source positions that differ by a 
    11341115rigid transformation involving scaling, rotation, and translation.  In 
    1135 each image, they look at each pair of points and compute the angle and 
    1136 the logarithm of the length of the vector connecting the pair.  For 
    1137 each list, the pairwise log-distance and angle are placed in a 
    1138 two-dimensional histograms.  Observe that if the whole list of points 
     1116each image, they iterate over each pair of points and compute the 
     1117vector difference of their positions.  For each list, the log-length 
     1118and angle of the pairwise difference vectors are accumulated in a 
     1119two-dimensional histogram.  Observe that if the whole list of points 
    11391120is scaled up by a constant factor, then the log-distance between each 
    11401121pair of points increases by a constant amount.  Similarly, if the 
    11411122whole list is rotated then the angles shift by a constant amount. 
    11421123Once the two histograms have been computed, their cross-correlation is 
    1143 computed.  (This is the same as shifting the histograms with respect 
    1144 to each other and recording the dot-product at each shifted position.) 
    1145 If the two lists contain a significant number of corresponding points, 
    1146 the cross-correlation signal will be strong at a shift corresponding 
    1147 to the difference in log-scale and rotation between the lists. 
    1148  
    1149  
    1150 This process is similar to a Hough transform 
     1124computed.  If the two lists contain a significant number of 
     1125corresponding points, the cross-correlation signal will be strongest 
     1126at a shift corresponding to the difference in log-scale and rotation 
     1127between the lists.  This process is similar to a Hough transform 
    11511128\cite{duda1972,ballard1981}, except that instead of finding the peak 
    11521129of a single parameter-space histogram, we are searching for a peak in 
     
    11621139 
    11631140 
    1164 %This procedure is simple and powerful, but requires that the transformation between 
    1165 %the coordinate systems be equal across the whole image.  This assumption can be violated 
    1166 %(but usually not by a amount)  
    1167  
    1168  
    1169  
    1170 \subsection{Blind astrometry} 
    1171  
    1172  
    1173 The majority of previous work on blind astrometry is motivated by the 
    1174 problem of spacecraft attitude estimation.  Sometimes called the 
    1175 ``lost in space'' or ``stellar gyroscope'' problem, the task is to 
    1176 estimate the pose of a spacecraft by using an image of the sky 
    1177 captured by an onboard camera.  Although similar in general spirit, 
    1178 the requirements and limitations of this application are quite 
    1179 different than our astronomical application.  Mass, power consumption, 
     1141\subsection{Blind astrometric calibration} 
     1142 
     1143 
     1144The majority of previous work on blind astrometric calibration is 
     1145motivated by the problem of spacecraft attitude estimation.  Sometimes 
     1146called the ``lost in space'' or ``stellar gyroscope'' problem, the 
     1147task is to estimate the pose of a spacecraft by using an image of the 
     1148sky captured by an onboard camera.  Although similar in general 
     1149spirit, the requirements and limitations of this application are quite 
     1150different than astronomical applications.  Mass, power consumption, 
    11801151and robustness of the system are primary concerns, and as a result the 
    11811152optical designs are very different from science-grade astronomical 
     
    11841155the exposure time is kept short to allow the system to function while 
    11851156the spacecraft is rotating.  As a result, image quality is typically 
    1186 quite poor: often only a handfull of the brightest stars may be 
    1187 visible.  Since the field of view is large, a reference catalog of a 
    1188 few thousand stars is sufficient to ensure that any view of the sky 
     1157quite poor: often only a handfull of the brightest stars are visible. 
     1158Since the field of view is large, a reference catalog of a few 
     1159thousand stars is sufficient to ensure that any view of the sky 
    11891160contains many reference stars.  Since the system will only process 
    11901161images from a single camera, the whole system can be customized and 
    11911162calibrated to that camera.  For example, the nonlinear distortions of 
    11921163the optical system can be measured, and the scale and bandpass of the 
    1193 imaging system are known. 
     1164imaging system are known, so the reference catalog can be tailored to 
     1165match. 
    11941166 
    11951167 
    11961168For example, Liebe \etal \cite{liebe2004} describe a system design 
    1197 with a $56 \deg$ field of view and exposure time of $50 \ 
    1198 \textrm{ms}$.  The resulting images contain tens of stars if the 
    1199 spacecraft is not rotating, but on average only three stars will be 
    1200 detectable when the rotation rate is $50\deg/\textrm{s}$.  The paper 
    1201 does not describe a particular algorithm for star identification, with 
    1202 the implication that it is not a particularly difficult problem since 
    1203 absolute brightness information will be available-- individual stars 
    1204 are more distinctive. 
     1169with a $56~\deg$ field of view and exposure time of $50~\unit{ms}$. 
     1170The resulting images contain tens of stars if the spacecraft is not 
     1171rotating, but on average only three stars will be detectable when the 
     1172rotation rate is $50~\deg/\unit{sec}$.  The paper does not describe a 
     1173particular algorithm for star identification, with the implication 
     1174that it is not a particularly difficult problem since absolute 
     1175brightness information will be available, and the total number of 
     1176stars that are visible to the camera is only a few hundred. 
     1177 
    12051178 
    12061179In earlier work \cite{liebe1993}, Liebe describes a star 
    12071180identification system.  The reference catalog is composed of the 1539 
    12081181brightest stars, with brightness calibrated to the camera used in the 
    1209 system.  The field of view is $30\deg$, and the system uses a 
     1182system.  The field of view is $30~\degrees$, and the system uses a 
    12101183feature-matching approach, using the brightest star in the field and 
    12111184its two nearest neighbours to define a geometric feature.  The feature 
     
    12161189so the scale is known.  An index is constructed by enumerating all 
    12171190such features that could possibly be detected, given the detection 
    1218 limits of the camera. 
    1219  
    1220 These features are coarsely quantized and stored in a table.  To 
    1221 account for noise in the feature descriptors, all neighbouring cells 
    1222 in the quantized feature space are also stored in the table.  This 
    1223 generates 185,000 features.  At test time, the features in the image 
    1224 are enumerated and the table of features is scanned; an exact feature 
    1225 match in the quantized space is assumed to be correct. 
     1191limits of the camera.  These features are coarsely quantized and 
     1192stored in a table.  To account for noise in the feature descriptors, 
     1193all neighbouring cells in the quantized feature space are also stored 
     1194in the table.  This generates $185,000$ features.  At test time, the 
     1195features in the image are enumerated and the table of features is 
     1196scanned; an exact feature match in the quantized space is assumed to 
     1197be correct. 
     1198 
    12261199 
    12271200This approach is a fairly straightforward geometric hashing technique, 
    12281201except that it does not use hashing as such, and there is no voting or 
    1229 verification scheme because feature aliasing is assume not to happen. 
     1202verification scheme because feature aliasing is assumed not to happen. 
    12301203 
    12311204\begin{figure} 
    12321205\begin{center} 
    1233 \includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth]{grid} 
     1206\includegraphics[width=\figunit]{grid} 
    12341207\end{center} 
    1235 \caption{A grid-based feature: two sources are used to define a local coordinate 
    1236   system which is discretized into a grid of cells.  Each cell becomes a bit in 
    1237   the feature descriptor; if a cell is occupied its bit is set. 
    1238   This figure is copied from MacKay \cite{mackay2005}.} 
     1208\caption{A grid-based feature: two sources are used to define a local 
     1209  coordinate system which is discretized into a grid of cells.  Each 
     1210  cell becomes a bit in the feature descriptor; if a cell is occupied 
     1211  its bit is set.  This figure is copied from MacKay 
     1212  \cite{mackay2005}.} 
    12391213\label{gridbased} 
    12401214\end{figure} 
     
    12491223center and orientation are determined, a grid is defined, and each 
    12501224remaining stars in the image is assigned to a grid cell.  The feature 
    1251 is a bit vector, one bit per grid cell, where the bit is set if the 
    1252 cell contains a star, and zero otherwise.  See Figure \ref{gridbased}. 
     1225is a bit vector, one bit per grid cell, where the bit is set only if 
     1226the cell contains a star.  See \figref{gridbased}. 
    12531227 
    12541228 
     
    12581232brightest $c n$ stars (for some safety factor $c$), computing the 
    12591233feature for each one and searching the index for a match.  A pair of 
    1260 features are defined to match if their dot product is above a 
    1261 threshold.  (This is equivalent to taking the bitwise \textsc{AND} of 
    1262 the bit vectors and counting the number of bits that are set.)  This 
     1234features is defined to match if their dot product is above a 
     1235threshold.  This is equivalent to taking the bitwise \textsc{AND} of 
     1236the bit vectors and counting the number of bits that are set.  This 
    12631237search can be implemented efficiently by using lookup tables: for each 
    12641238bit, they maintain a list of the features for which that bit is set. 
    1265 (Notice that this is equivalent to using a grid-based geometric 
    1266 hashing approach: each grid cell is equivalent to a discretized pair 
    1267 of relative coordinates, which becomes a hash key, and the `lookup 
    1268 table' is a hash table.) 
     1239Note that this is equivalent to using a grid-based geometric hashing 
     1240approach: each grid cell is equivalent to a discretized relative 
     1241coordinate vector, which becomes a hash key, and the ``lookup table'' 
     1242is a hash table. 
    12691243 
    12701244 
     
    12751249 
    12761250 
    1277 The system is designed to operate on images of diameter $8\deg$, and 
    1278 performs well on simulated data.  They use a grid size of $40 \times 
    1279 40$, and find that on average $25$ grid cells are filled.  Their index 
    1280 contains 13,000 patterns, which means that false positives are quite 
    1281 rare.  However, misidentification of the nearest neighbour, or edge 
    1282 effects (assigning a star to the wrong grid cell due to positional 
    1283 noise) mean that failures to find a match are not uncommon, and are 
    1284 more likely in regions of the sky with high stellar density. 
     1251The system is designed to operate on images of diameter $8~\degrees$, 
     1252and performs well on simulated data.  They use a grid size of $40 
     1253\times 40$, and find that on average $25$ grid cells are filled. 
     1254Their index contains $13,000$ patterns, which means that false 
     1255positives are quite rare.  However, misidentification of the nearest 
     1256neighbour, or edge effects (assigning a star to the wrong grid cell 
     1257due to positional noise) mean that failures to find a match are not 
     1258uncommon, and are more likely in regions of the sky with high stellar 
     1259density. 
    12851260 
    12861261In later work, Clouse and Padgett \cite{clouse2000} extend this 
     
    12891264extension, along with smaller noise levels in the (simulated) imaging 
    12901265system, allows them to extend the approach down to fields of view 
    1291 $2\deg$ in diameter. 
    1292  
    1293 Given two features, they compute the dot product between the bit 
    1294 vectors, then proceed to estimate the probabilities that the match is 
    1295 a true positive and false positive.  These probability distributions 
    1296 are quite complex, so several simplifying approximations are made, and 
    1297 the remaining parameters are estimated by running simulations. 
    1298 % With positional noise set to $0.5$ pixels (in a $1024 \times 1024$ image), 
    1299 % and magnitude noise $0.8$ mag, they find a true positive rate of $96\%$ and false positive 
    1300 % rate of $0.3\%$. 
    1301  
    1302  
    1303  
     1266$2~\degrees$ in diameter. 
     1267 
     1268\comment{ 
     1269  Given two features, they compute the dot product between the bit 
     1270  vectors, then proceed to estimate the probabilities that the match is 
     1271  a true positive and false positive.  These probability distributions 
     1272  are quite complex, so several simplifying approximations are made, and 
     1273  the remaining parameters are estimated by running simulations. 
     1274  } 
    13041275 
    13051276Harvey \cite{harvey2004} presents two different approaches, one 
    13061277grid-based and the other shape-based.  The grid-based approach is 
    1307 similar to \cite{padgett1997, clouse2000}.  A coarser grid is used, so 
    1308 more stars are likely to appear in each bin.  To compensate, a grid 
    1309 cell is only considered ``occupied'' if it contains more than some 
    1310 threshold number of stars.  The other major change is that he expects 
    1311 a test image to be an ``overexposure'' or ``underexposure'' relative 
    1312 to the reference catalog: the objects in the image are either brighter 
    1313 or dimmer than those in the index.  This implies that the test image 
    1314 should contain either a subset or a superset of the stars in the 
    1315 index, and therefore the image feature vector must be either greater 
    1316 than or less than an index feature at each bit.  This allows simple 
    1317 bit operations to be used to find feature matches, and feature 
    1318 matching is performed by a linear scan through the index. 
     1278similar to the Padgett--Kreutz-Delgado and Clouse--Padgett approaches 
     1279\cite{padgett1997, clouse2000}.  A coarser grid is used, so more stars 
     1280are likely to appear in each bin.  To compensate, a grid cell is only 
     1281considered ``occupied'' if it contains more than some threshold number 
     1282of stars.  The other major change is that he expects a test image to 
     1283be an ``overexposure'' or ``underexposure'' relative to the reference 
     1284catalog.  This implies that the test image should contain either a 
     1285subset or a superset of the stars in the index, and therefore the 
     1286image feature vector must be either greater than or less than an index 
     1287feature at each bit.  This allows simple bit operations to be used to 
     1288find feature matches, and feature matching is performed by a linear 
     1289scan through the index. 
    13191290 
    13201291Harvey's shape-based approach uses constrained $n$-star constellations 
    1321 in order to aggregate information from a larger number of stars 
    1322 without allowing the number of potential features to grow 
    1323 combinatorially.  Specifically, Harvey uses a pair of stars to define 
    1324 a narrow wedge in the image, then describes the relative positions and 
    1325 angles of a fixed number of nearby stars within that wedge. 
    1326 Unfortunately, this makes the feature highly sensitive to distractor 
    1327 and dropout stars, since the feature depends on the stars in the 
    1328 feature being enumerated in a particular order.  As a result, all 
    1329 potential features (allowing any combination of stars to drop out) 
    1330 must be checked; the number of features grows exponentially as the 
    1331 density of stars increases. 
     1292in order to aggregate information from a large number of stars without 
     1293allowing the number of potential features to grow combinatorially. 
     1294Specifically, Harvey uses a pair of stars to define a narrow wedge in 
     1295the image, then describes the relative positions and angles of a fixed 
     1296number of nearby stars within that wedge.  Unfortunately, this makes 
     1297the feature highly sensitive to distractor and dropout stars, since 
     1298the feature depends on the stars in the feature being enumerated in a 
     1299particular order.  As a result, all potential features (allowing any 
     1300combination of stars to drop out) must be checked; the number of 
     1301features grows exponentially as the density of stars increases. 
     1302 
    13321303 
    13331304Harvey makes the useful observation that a cascade of indices can be 
     
    13361307 
    13371308 
    1338  
    13391309MacKay and Roweis \cite{mackay2005} point out that a grid-based 
    1340 feature such as that used by \cite{padgett1997, harvey2004} leads 
    1341 naturally to a hashing-based strategy. 
    1342 %  Each grid cell is associated with a bit that is turned on if the cell 
    1343 %is occupied. 
    1344 %This value is placed in a hash table with a mapping back to its 
    1345 %position on the sky. 
    1346 Since false positives can occur as a result of feature aliasing or 
    1347 hash collision, they employ a voting scheme. 
    1348 %several feature matches must accumulate before the 
    1349 %field can be considered solved. 
    1350 Since false negatives can occur as a result of dropouts and 
    1351 distractors (\emph{any} missing or extra star causes the hash code to 
    1352 change completely), many features must be extracted for each region of 
    1353 the sky. 
     1310feature such as that used by Harvey leads naturally to a hashing-based 
     1311strategy.  Each grid cell is associated with a bit that is turned on 
     1312if the cell is occupied.  This value is placed in a hash table with a 
     1313mapping back to its position on the sky.  Since false positives can 
     1314occur as a result of feature aliasing or hash collision, a voting 
     1315scheme is employed: several feature matches must accumulate before the 
     1316match is accepted.  Since false negatives can occur as a result of 
     1317dropouts and distractors (\emph{any} missing or extra star causes the 
     1318hash code to change completely), many features must be extracted for 
     1319each region of the sky. 
    13541320 
    13551321 
    13561322\subsection{Fine-tuning astrometry} 
    13571323 
    1358 In order to ``stack'' astronomical images (combine pixels from 
    1359 different images to produce higher-quality results), or to do 
     1324In order to ``co-add'' or ``stack'' astronomical images (combine 
     1325pixels from different images of higher signal-to-noise), or to do 
    13601326proper-motion studies (measure the movement of stars over time), it is 
    1361 necessary to fine-tune the astrometry of the images.  This is similar 
    1362 to the \emph{bundle adjustment} problem in computer vision 
    1363 \cite{triggs2000}, in that it involves the simultaneous optimization 
    1364 of the various camera (telescope) parameters and the estimated 
    1365 positions of objects in the world.  Fine-tuning astrometry is easier 
    1366 because it is essentially two-dimensional, but more difficult because 
    1367 the camera parameters include polynomial distortion terms to model the 
    1368 image distortion introduced by telescope optics. 
    1369  
    1370 The software package \emph{SCAMP} by Bertin \cite{bertin2005} is a 
    1371 popular tool used by astronomers to fine-tune the astrometry of their 
    1372 images and solve simultaneously large collections of images.  For each 
    1373 image, it is assumed that the center of the image is known to about 
    1374 25\% of the size of the image, and the scale is known to within a 
    1375 factor of two.  The histogram-alignment method of \cite{kaiser1999} is 
    1376 used to find the translation, scaling, and rotation between the image 
    1377 and a reference catalog, which allows the correspondences between 
    1378 image and reference catalog stars to be determined. 
    1379  
    1380 The core of the SCAMP system is a $\chi^2$ minimization of the total 
    1381 weighted distance between the projected positions of all star 
     1327necessary to fine-tune the astrometric calibration of their images. 
     1328This is similar to the \emph{bundle adjustment} problem in computer 
     1329vision \cite{triggs2000}, in that it involves the simultaneous 
     1330optimization of the various camera and telescope parameters and the 
     1331estimated positions of objects in the world.  Fine-tuning astrometric 
     1332calibrations is easier because it is essentially two-dimensional, but 
     1333more difficult because the camera parameters include polynomial 
     1334distortion terms to model the image distortion introduced by telescope 
     1335optics. 
     1336 
     1337 
     1338The software package \scamp by Bertin \cite{bertin2005} is a popular 
     1339tool used by astronomers to fine-tune simultaneously the astrometric 
     1340calibrations of a large collection of images.  For each image, it is 
     1341assumed that the center of the image is known to about 25\% of the 
     1342size of the image, and the scale is known to within a factor of two. 
     1343The histogram-alignment method of \cite{kaiser1999} is used to find 
     1344the translation, scaling, and rotation between the image and a 
     1345reference catalog, which allows the correspondences between image and 
     1346reference catalog stars to be determined. 
     1347 
     1348The core of the \scamp system is a chi-squared minimization of the 
     1349total weighted distance between the projected positions of all star 
    13821350correspondences among the set of images and the reference catalog. 
    13831351The parameters to be adjusted are the center, scale, rotation, and 
     
    13871355share some distortion terms due to the telescope optics.  This reduces 
    13881356the degrees of freedom of the fitting process, resulting in more 
    1389 robust fits.  SCAMP can effectively fine-tune thousands of images to 
    1390 sub-pixel accuracy. 
     1357robust fits.  \scamp can fine-tune thousands of images to sub-pixel 
     1358accuracy. 
    13911359 
    13921360