All Sky Camera

The timelapse below shows the last hour of sky imagery, updated every 5 minutes. Both a full 180-degree fisheye view and an unwrapped panoramic image are shown.

The strip below shows a single column of pixels sampled throughout the past 24 hours, giving a compact summary of the day's sky conditions.

View these images larger

Equipment

The all-sky camera operating 24/7 at UACNJ is a fisheye video camera from Moonglow Technologies. It captures a full 180-degree view of the sky at 640x480 resolution, with automatic exposure that handles both daytime and nighttime conditions. On a clear dark night it can reveal stars down to about magnitude 3 and provides a good view of the Milky Way. The camera can image directly into the sun without damage, though you'll see column overloading and some artifacts around the solar disk. It's particularly useful for monitoring cloud cover, which is of obvious interest at an observatory.

Camera

The fisheye lens and camera are enclosed inside a glass dome mounted on a metal base that attaches to a standard 1.5" pipe. Power and video cables run out through the bottom of the pipe. The effective image area of the round fisheye image is approximately 540x460 pixels within the full 640x480 frame. The camera is fully automatic, setting exposure based on average scene brightness, with exposure times ranging from 1/100,000 sec in bright sunlight to about 4 seconds on dark nights. The camera is oriented with north at the top of the image. Video output is digitized for computer display and storage.

Installation

The camera is mounted on top of a 1.5" aluminum pipe attached to the observatory house roof, slightly below the roof peak. Despite that, it still captures a wide, unobstructed view of the sky. Cables run inside the pipe and are routed into the building through the same conduit used by the SETI receiver and the Magnetometer. The glass dome is susceptible to morning dew and winter icing. To address this, the camera kit includes a snap-on dew heater ring that monitors ambient temperature and applies heat automatically as needed.