TFA: new sensor records thousands of colors, many invisible to the eye,

Like Infragreen?

uttertosh: TFA: new sensor records thousands of colors, many invisible to the eye,

Like Infragreen?

Octarine?

I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear x-rays. And I want to smell dark matter.

My room isn't messy, unless you count the bodily fluids. But I'm sure we already had technology to detect that.

stole it from invader zim!

Well, do as you please with that camera in my room, but the moment you pull out the black-light camera, I cut you in half.

maddermaxx: uttertosh: TFA: new sensor records thousands of colors, many invisible to the eye,

Like Infragreen?

Octarine?

i thought that was the name of the chimera bastard of the nectarine that got tentacle-raped....

The old cameras seem to do the same thing.

Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A new sensor records thousands of colors, many invisible to the eye, and detects environmental hazards and contaminants in real time, Israeli researchers say.

Okay... Geeks help me out here: How do you calibrate something like this? And how do you test it?

Traditional cameras can be used to detect particulate matter in the air just because you can measure the "haze", e.g. as in chuckufarlie's post.

I'm guessing by "records thousands of colors" it's actually just looking for particular wavelengths of light. If you know the time of day and the location of the camera you can pretty easily calculate the brightness and angle of the sun at any given point in time, so you know exactly what color the sky should be. The presence of certain non-particulate pollutants can change that expected color, so you could probably determine what might be in the air by detecting slight changes from that reference value.

That's just a wild-ass guess though. In that system the only calibration you'd need would be the "true" color of sunlight at that latitude, longitude, and elevation, which you could do on any bright, sunny day with good air quality.

Also, the reason that traditional cameras are hard to calibrate is because color-response in the human eye is extraordinarily subjective. In a scientific system you're typically looking for specific wavelengths (or other properties) of light... those can be measured empirically so it's easier calibrate. You find a "true" reference point and calibrate your system to match that reference, and then you call it a day.

If you think way back to that high-school chemistry class you slept through, you will remember that chemicals absorb and emit light at specific wavelengths. A camera with a tunable narrow-band filter (new window) can take images that look only at one very specific wavelength at a time. If you're interested in, for example, sulfur dioxide then you can take one picture tuned to one of the wavelengths it strongly absorbs and a second picture at a slightly different wavelength that isn't absorbed. The difference between those two pictures will show you where the gas is present.

If it's my room, that's not pollution you're seeing...

/obligatory comment.

Well, I do have a lot of different game consoles...

I live in Los Angeles - I don't need a camera for that.

It can see the chicken tandoori in my digestive tract? Spooky.

Since when does semen = pollution?

The human eye sees only three bands of light -- red, green and blue -- but researchers at Tel Aviv University say their "hyperspectral" camera can sense a spectrum of colors that allows it to analyze 300 times more information than the human brain can process.

So the camera will take that 'invisible' light, turn it into RBG so that we limited humans can see it.

/Smog camera is smug ...

...their "hyperspectral" camera can sense a spectrum of colors that allows it to analyze 300 times more information than the human brain can process.

Who'd have imagined we could ever do something like this?

Oh wait...



Awesome.