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In view synthesis, a neural radiance field approximates underlying density and radiance fields based on a sparse set of scene pictures. To generate a pixel of a novel view, it marches a ray through the pixel and computes a weighted sum of…
The kinematics of the Solar zenith passage on the Earth was shown as a simple harmonic motion. This analytical model used the uniform circular motion to describe the Earth's rotation relative to its axis and relative to the Sun, also this…
We illustrate a method for estimating the vertical position of the Sun above the Galactic plane by $\gamma$-ray observations. Photons of $\gamma$-ray wavelengths are particularly well suited for geometrical and kinematic studies of the…
We present a learning-based technique for estimating high dynamic range (HDR), omnidirectional illumination from a single low dynamic range (LDR) portrait image captured under arbitrary indoor or outdoor lighting conditions. We train our…
In this paper, we present a new heuristic derivation of the gravitational deflection of light around the Sun at the undergraduate level. Instead of solving the geodesic equation directly, we compute the correct deflection angle by focusing…
We report our experience in bringing science into US and French classrooms. We participated in the US scientific educational program Project ASTRO. It is based on a partnership between a school teacher and an astronomer. They together…
First part of a didactic sequence of activities on some topics of Astronomy, related mainly with the day and night cycle and the seasons, including the construction of a simplified solar system model and its use as a resource to discuss…
We present a scheme for fast environment light estimation from the RGBD appearance of individual objects and their local image areas. Conventional inverse rendering is too computationally demanding for real-time applications, and the…
While supervised object detection methods achieve impressive accuracy, they generalize poorly to images whose appearance significantly differs from the data they have been trained on. To address this in scenarios where annotating data is…
The gravitational field of the sun will focus light from a distant source to a focal point at a minimal distance of 550 Astronomical Units from the sun. A proposed mission to this gravitational focus could use the sun as a very large lens,…
The recent growth in the number of satellite images fosters the development of effective deep-learning techniques for Remote Sensing (RS). However, their full potential is untapped due to the lack of large annotated datasets. Such a problem…
We present Neural Microfacet Fields, a method for recovering materials, geometry, and environment illumination from images of a scene. Our method uses a microfacet reflectance model within a volumetric setting by treating each sample along…
Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) are trained to minimize the rendering loss of predicted viewpoints. However, the photometric loss often does not provide enough information to disambiguate between different possible geometries yielding the…
Intra-class terrain differences such as water content directly influence a vehicle's ability to traverse terrain, yet RGB vision systems may fail to distinguish these properties. Evaluating a terrain's spectral content beyond red-green-blue…
A smartphone is a powerful learning aid in the hands of a large section of students around the world. The camera of the phone can be used for several learning purposes apart from its obvious purpose of photographing. If the focal length of…
In this paper we describe a simple conceptual problem, regarding the actual position of the Sun at sunset or sunrise. Although this problem can be easily explained in terms of rotating frames of references and standard Coriolis Effect, it…
It is straightforward to determine the size of the Earth and the distance to the Moon without making use of a telescope. The methods have been known since the 3rd century BC. However, few amateur or professional astronomers have worked this…
Direct Sun light absorption by trace gases can be used to quantify them and investigate atmospheric chemistry. In such experiments, the main optical apparatus is often a grating or a Fourier transform spectrometer. A solar tracker based on…
Recent works have shown exciting results in unsupervised image de-rendering -- learning to decompose 3D shape, appearance, and lighting from single-image collections without explicit supervision. However, many of these assume simplistic…
A model that combines celestial geometry and atmospheric physics is used to calculate the dimming of artificial satellites as they enter and exit the Earth's shadow. Refraction of sunlight by the terrestrial atmosphere can illuminate a…