All Sky Camera

The purpose of these systems is to carry out Full Sky (180°) images of the night or day sky, and in a continuous fashion. High sensitivity systems can record a very good image quality of the night sky.

Application fields of all-sky camera include (in a nutshell) : (i) Astronomy – cloud cover and transparency map, Robotic telescopes farms, no mobile parts; (ii) Free Space Optics (FSO) communication – cloud cover and transparency map, Site survey, Network architecture design and balancing; (iii) Atmospheric studies – cloud coverage and type, atmospheric transparency, urban light pollution monitoring, northern lights, passive optical sensing; (iv) Defense – realtime and passive optical detection for satellite re-entry, planes and drones. Network of camera to cover larger territory; (v) Solar Power – cloud cover, transparency map, site survey and power production forecasting.

Specification of these device is improving very rapidly, drived by technological development of digital optical device and electronic and optic miniaturization.

Technical specification pertain to a entry level system. The 3D model is based on the ALCOR ALPHEA camera.