| Summary: | For photographers to capture good pictures of their subjects, the lighting conditions must be taken into account and adjusted for accordingly. The same holds true
for a satellite attempting to photograph another object in space: it must know the
lighting conditions to adjust camera settings and position itself properly to take the
best photograph. This thesis presents a photon mapping based algorithm to compute
a physically accurate representation of the illumination of objects in orbit around the
Earth, taking into account the effects that cause refraction in the atmosphere. I also
discuss the assumptions that I have made to utilize the algorithm in an interactive
3D visualization tool, which I implemented to view the illumination on objects at
arbitrary positions in space. Finally, I show that the photon mapping method offers
improvements over simpler methods of computing illumination.
|
|---|
