Change Detection Using Synthetic Aperture Sonar: Preliminary Results from the Larvik Trial

International audienceIn April of 2011, FFI led a sea trial near Larvik, Norway on FFIs research vessel the H.U. Sverdrup II with participation by representatives from Canada, United States, and France. One objective of the sea trial was to acquire a data set suitable for examining incoherent and coherent change detection and automated target recognition (ATR) algorithms applied to Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) imagery. The end goal is to produce an automated tool for detecting recently placed objects on the seafloor. To test these algorithms two areas were chosen, one with a comparatively benign seafloor and one with a boulder strewn complex seafloor. Each area was surveyed before and after deployment of objects. The survey time intervals varied from two days to eight days. In this paper we present the trial and show examples of SAS images and change detection of the images

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) is a young organization dedicated to timedomain observations at optical and (potentially) near-IR wavelengths. To this end, LCOGT is constructing a worldwide network of telescopes, including the two 2 m Faulkes telescopes, as many as 17 × 1 m telescopes, and as many as 23 × 40 cm telescopes. These telescopes initially will be outfitted for imaging and (excepting the 40 cm telescopes) spectroscopy at wavelengths between the atmospheric UV cutoff and the roughly 1-μm limit of silicon detectors. Since the first of LCOGT’s 1 m telescopes are now being deployed, we lay out here LCOGT’s scientific goals and the requirements that these goals place on network architecture and performance, we summarize the network’s present and projected level of development, and we describe our expected schedule for completing it. In the bulk of the paper, we describe in detail the technical approaches that we have adopted to attain desired performance. In particular, we discuss our choices for the number and location of network sites, for the number and sizes of telescopes, for the specifications of the first generation of instruments, for the software that will schedule and control the network’s telescopes and reduce and archive its data, and for the structure of the scientific and educational programs for which the network will provide observations