“A physically-based night sky model” by Jensen, Durand, Dorsey, Stark, Shirley, et al. …

This paper presents a physically-based model of the night sky for realistic image synthesis. We model both the direct appearance of the night sky and the illumination coming from the Moon, the stars, the zodiacal light, and the atmosphere. To accurately predict the appearance of night scenes we use physically-based astronomical data, both for position and radiometry. The Moon is simulated as a geometric model illuminated by the Sun, using recently measured elevation and albedo maps, as well as a specialized BRDF. For visible stars, we include the position, magnitude, and temperature of the star, while for the Milky Way and other nebulae we use a processed photograph. Zodiacal light due to scattering in the dust covering the solar system, galactic light, and airglow due to light emission of the atmosphere are simulated from measured data. We couple these components with an accurate simulation of the atmosphere. To demonstrate our model, we show a variety of night scenes rendered with a Monte Carlo ray tracer.

1. BARANOSKI, G., ROKNE, J., SHIRLEY, P., TRONDSEN, T., AND BASTOS, R. Simulating the aurora borealis. In Proc. of Pacific Graphics (2000).
2. BLACKWELL, D. E. The zodiacal light. Scientific American 54 (July 1960).
3. BLINN, J. The jupiter and saturn fly-by animations, 1980.
4. BLINN, J. F. Light reflection functions for simulation of clouds and dusty surfaces. Proc. of SIGGRAPH (1982).
5. DERMOTT, S. F., AND LIOU, J. C. Detection of asteroidal dust particles from known families in near-earth orbits. In AIP Conference Proceedings (July 1994), vol. 301(1), pp. 13-21.
6. DOBASHI, Y., NISHITA, T., KANEDA, K., AND YAMASHITA, H. A fast display method of sky colour using basis functions. J. of Visualization and Computer Animation 8, 3 (Apr. – June 1997), 115-127.
7. DUFFETT-SMITH, P. Astronomy with your personal computer, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
8. DURAND, F., AND DORSEY, J. Interactive tone mapping. Eurographics Workshop on Rendering (2000).
9. EBERT, D., MUSGRAVE, K., PEACHEY, D., PERLIN, K., AND WORLEY, S. Texturing and Modeling: A procedural Approach. Academic Press, 1994.
10. GREEN, R., Ed. Spherical Astronomy. Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1985.
11. HAPKE, B. Optical properties of the lunar surface. In Physics and astronomy of the Moon, Kopal, Ed. Academic Press, 1971.
12. HAPKE, B. W. A theoretical photometric function of the lunar surface. Journal of Geophysical Research 68, 15 (1963), 4571-4586.
13. HENYEY, L. G., AND GREENSTEIN, J. L. Diffuse radiation in the galaxy. Astrophysics Journal 93 (1941), 70-83.
14. HOFFLEIT, D., AND WARREN, W. The Bright Star Catalogue, 5th ed. Yale University Observatory, 1991.
15. HUNT. Light and dark adaptation and the perception of color. Journal of the Optical Society of Am. A 42, 3 (1952), 190.
16. J. VAN DIGGELEN. Photometric properties of lunar carter floors. Rech. Obs. Utrecht 14 (1959), 1-114.
17. JENSEN, H. W., PREMOZE, S., SHIRLEY, P., THOMPSON, W., FERWERDA, J., AND STARK, M. Night rendering. Tech. Rep. UUCS-00-016, Computer Science Dept., University of Utah, Aug. 2000.
18. JOHNSON, H. L., AND MORGAN, W. W. Fundamental stellar photometry for standards of spectral type on the revised system of the yerkes spectral atlas. Astrophysics Journal 117, 313 (1953).
19. KLASSEN, R. Modeling the effect of the atmosphere on light. ACM Trans. on Graphics 6, 3 (1987), 215-237.
20. KOPAL, Z. The Moon. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland, 1969.
21. LANG, K. Astrophysical formulae. Astronomy and astrophysics library (1999).
22. LARSON, G. W., RUSHMEIER, H., AND PIATKO, C. A visibility matching tone reproduction operator for high dynamic range scenes. IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics 3, 4 (Oc. – Dec. 1997), 291-306.
23. MEEUS, J. Astronomical Formulae for Calculators, 4th ed. Willman-Bell, Inc., 1988.
24. MEEUS, J. Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. Willmann-Bell, Inc., Richmond, VA, 1999.
25. MELLINGER, A. A 360 o x 180 o all-sky panorama. http://canopus.physik.unipotsdam. de/~axm/images.html, 2000.
26. MINNAERT, M. Light and Color in the Outdoors. Springer-Verlag, 1974.
27. NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY. Clementine deep space program science experiment. http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/.
28. NAVARRO, R., AND LOSADA, M. A. Shape of stars and optical quality of the human eye. Journal of the Optical Society of America (A) 14, 2 (1997), 353-359.
29. NISHITA, T., DOBASHI, Y., KANEDA, K., AND YAMASHITA, H. Display method of the sky color taking into account multiple scattering. In Proc. of Pacific Graphics (1996).
30. NISHITA, T., AND NAKAMAE, E. Continuous tone representation of threedimensional objects illuminated by sky light. In Computer Graphics (SIG- GRAPH ’86 Proceedings) (1986), vol. 20(4).
31. NISHITA, T., SIRAI, T., TADAMURA, K., AND NAKAMAE, E. Display of the earth taking into account atmospheric scattering. In Computer Graphics (SIG- GRAPH ’93 Proceedings) (1993), vol. 27.
32. OBERSCHELP, W., AND HORNUG, A. Visualization of eclipses and planetary conjunction events. the interplay between model coherence, scaling and animation. In Proc. of Computer Graphics International (2000).
33. OLSON, T. The colors of the stars. In IST/SID 6th Color Imaging Conf. (1998).
34. PREETHAM, A. J., SHIRLEY, P., AND SMITS, B. A practical analytic model for daylight. In Proc. of SIGGRAPH (1999).
35. PREMOZE, S., THOMPSON, W., AND SHIRLEY, P. Geospecific rendering of alpine terrain. In Eurographics Workshop on Rendering (1999).
36. REACH, W. T., FRANZ, B. A., KELSALL, T., AND WEILAND, J. L. Dirbe observations of the zodiacal light. In AIP Conference Proceedings (January 1996), vol. 348, pp. 37-46.
37. RICHTER, N. B. The photometric properties of interplanetary matter. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 3 (1962), 179-186.
38. ROACH, F., AND GORDON, J. The Light of the Night Sky. Geophysics and Astrophysics Monographs, V. 4. D Reidel Pub Co, 1973.
39. SIEGEL, R., AND HOWELL, J. R. Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer, 3rd ed. Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1992.
40. SMITH, R. C. Observational Astrophysics. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
41. SPENCER, S., SHIRLEY, P., ZIMMERMAN, K., AND GREENBERG, D. Physically-based glare effects for digital images. In Computer Graphics (Proc. Siggraph) (1995).
42. TADAMURA, K., NAKAMAE, E., KANEDA, K., BABA, M., YAMASHITA, H., AND NISHITA, T. Modeling of skylight and rendering of outdoor scenes. In Eurographics ’93 (1993), Blackwell Publishers.
43. UPSTILL, S. The Realistic Presentation of Synthetic Images: Image Processing in Computer Graphics. PhD thesis, Berkeley, 1985.
44. U.S. NAVAL OBSERVATORY, R. G. O. The Astronomical Almanac for the Year 2001. U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001.
45. VAN DE HULST, H. Light Scattering by Small Particles. Wiley & Sons, 1957.
46. VAN DE HULST, H. Multiple Light Scattering. Academic Press, 1980.
47. YAEGER, L., UPSON, C., AND MYERS, R. Combining physical and visual simulation – creation of the planet jupiter for the film “2010”. Proc. of SIGGRAPH) (1986).