Joel's Projects >> sunshine_wallpaper

====== Sunshine Wallpaper ======
Watching Danny Boyle's movie [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_%282007_film%29|Sunshine]] prompted me to attempt my own implementation of the solar observation room seen in the movie. My implementation uses live imagery from the [[http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/|NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory]].
===== version 1 =====
{{ :sunshine:sunshinewallpaper.jpg?300|}}
  * [[http://www.airwebreathe.org.uk/sunshine/sunshine-uv.sh.txt|sunshine-uv.sh]]
  * [[http://www.airwebreathe.org.uk/sunshine/sunshine-visible.sh.txt|sunshine-visible.sh]]
Version 1 of my solar observatory is a bash script which uses wget and ImageMagick to download and combine together images of the sun at various wavelengths to produce a wallpaper image. If the script is triggered as a cron job, to execute every 10 minutes, the wallpaper will stay up-to-date.

Install the script in a location where temporary files and the resultant file can be created.

===== version 2 =====
Version 2 will improve upon version 1 by using SDO imagery in the raw FITS format with contains 16-bits per channel intensity. This will provide a much greater dynamic range in the input data which I can use as a source for bloom and lens flare effects.

I'm particular interested in making an implementation of this technique:

  * [[http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/lensflareRendering/|Physically-Based Real-Time Lens Flare Rendering]].
  * [[https://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2013/LE13/PracticalReal-TimeLens.pdf|Practical Real-Time Lens Flare]]
===== Movie Screenshots =====
{{gallery>sunshine:movie:}}
===== Venus Transit 2012 =====
{{:sunshine:transit.gif}}