Nikon Makes Special Firmware For NASA To Block Galactic Cosmic Rays In Photos (petapixel.com) 31
In an exclusive interview with PetaPixel, astronaut Don Pettit reveals the changes that Nikon makes to its firmware especially for NASA. From the report: Galactic cosmic rays are high-energy particles that originate from outside the solar system that likely come from explosive events such as a supernova. They are bad news for cameras in space -- damaging the sensor and spoiling photos -- so Nikon made special firmware for NASA to limit the harm. Pettit tells PetaPixel that Nikon changed the in-camera noise reduction settings to battle the cosmic rays -- noise is unwanted texture and blur on photos.
Normal cameras have in-camera noise reduction for exposures equal to or longer than one second. This is because camera manufacturers don't think photographers need noise reduction for shorter exposures because there's no noise to reduce. But in space, that's not true. "Our cameras in space get sensor damage from galactic cosmic rays and after about six months we replace all the cameras but you still have cameras with significant cosmic ray damage," explains Pettit. "It shows up at fast shutter speeds, not just the slow ones. So we got Nikon to change the algorithm so that it can do in-camera noise reduction at shutter speeds of up to 500th of a second."
Pettit says Nikon's in-camera noise reduction "does wonders" for getting rid of the cosmic ray damage and that "trying to get rid of it after the fact is really difficult." That's not the only special firmware feature that Nikon makes for NASA; photographers who shoot enough photos know that the file naming system resets itself eventually which is no good for the space agency's astronauts. "The file naming system on a standard digital system will repeat every so often and we can't have two pictures with the same number," explains Pettit. "We'll take half a million pictures with the crew on orbit and so Nikon has changed the way the RAW files are numbered so that there will be no two with the same file number." The report notes that NASA started using Nikon film cameras in 1971, shortly after the Apollo era; "in part because Nikon is so good at making custom modifications that help the astronauts." Previously, the agency used boxy, black Hasselblad cameras.
Normal cameras have in-camera noise reduction for exposures equal to or longer than one second. This is because camera manufacturers don't think photographers need noise reduction for shorter exposures because there's no noise to reduce. But in space, that's not true. "Our cameras in space get sensor damage from galactic cosmic rays and after about six months we replace all the cameras but you still have cameras with significant cosmic ray damage," explains Pettit. "It shows up at fast shutter speeds, not just the slow ones. So we got Nikon to change the algorithm so that it can do in-camera noise reduction at shutter speeds of up to 500th of a second."
Pettit says Nikon's in-camera noise reduction "does wonders" for getting rid of the cosmic ray damage and that "trying to get rid of it after the fact is really difficult." That's not the only special firmware feature that Nikon makes for NASA; photographers who shoot enough photos know that the file naming system resets itself eventually which is no good for the space agency's astronauts. "The file naming system on a standard digital system will repeat every so often and we can't have two pictures with the same number," explains Pettit. "We'll take half a million pictures with the crew on orbit and so Nikon has changed the way the RAW files are numbered so that there will be no two with the same file number." The report notes that NASA started using Nikon film cameras in 1971, shortly after the Apollo era; "in part because Nikon is so good at making custom modifications that help the astronauts." Previously, the agency used boxy, black Hasselblad cameras.
That's (Score:2)
fantastic.
Re: (Score:2)
Or rather, it isn't going to be.
Re:That's (Score:4, Interesting)
It is rather common in high-energy physics to remove shit based on some guesswork of what shit hitting your pixel-based detectors is supposed to look like.
There is a whole bunch of companies that produce "solutions" based on CERN's "timepix" chips, for example, who claim they can guess what kind of radiation has hit you by the pattern it leaves on the chip by massaging the data with AI.
And so on.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, it's pretty standard for environments where you're getting constant radiation-induced noise. I guess this is news because now Nikon is doing it.
Which is kind of a weird thing to get excited about, presumably NASA alongside any number of commercial vendors already have decades of experience in doing this. Is this a Nikon PR story?
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely. I mentioned that particular chip precisely because nasa's been using it for years.
Surprise, why the files need to be named IMG_1234? (Score:2)
"The file naming system on a standard digital system will repeat every so often" - and who's fault is that? Everyone who wasn't born yesterday knows this nonsense, even with the lastest cameras (or at least including from the last 5 years or so and going back to before Y2k).
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry. To avoid collisions, they've completely removed numbers, and every single file will now be called "IMG.JPEG".
Re: (Score:3)
My sync script uses the exif or fat date stamp to rename the files yyyymmddhhmmss.jpeg etc .
I rarely make multiple exposures within 2 sec but adding 00 to 99 would be just one more step.
Re: (Score:2)
You could just prepend your scheme and you would be fine, you'd have:
yyyymmddhhmmssIMG_1234.jpeg etc..
Re: (Score:2)
I just use jhead ( https://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel... [sentex.ca] ) with command line option -ft -autorot -n%format%
Re: (Score:2)
It's called Design rule for Camera File System [wikipedia.org] and dictates a standard format for storing image files on a storage device. It's designed to be relatively easy to implement on a camera processor.
Moving the files to a PC, your PC is big an
Re: (Score:2)
Well given that this "standard" was "established in 2003 and revised in 2010" so it started when digital cameras and the format they're using were already at multiple generations, and it died ages ago in terms of "the entire point - the camera processors were weak" I'd say it should be irrelevant for any current decisions.
I've got multiple "Your PC could import the files from the camera storage and rename them appropriately while importing." answers already but they fail to capture both a less complex and
Make similar protection for gasptronauts (Score:1)
There is a hard limit on the number of characters in the title of this post, but wait what were we talking about again?
Space telescopes? (Score:4, Interesting)
How do space telescopes handle this sort of damage? Reading the summary I assumed they were talking about telescopes until they said they replaced the cameras every few months. Why don't space-based telescopes have the same problem?
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite what you're looking for but related.
https://www.reddit.com/r/space... [reddit.com]
Here's a link to the Hubble user manuals.
https://hst-docs.stsci.edu/hom [stsci.edu]
Re:Space telescopes? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the info from the HST handbook about cosmic rays.
https://hst-docs.stsci.edu/acs... [stsci.edu]
Boxy cameras⦠(Score:1)
âoePreviously, the agency used boxy, black Hasselblad cameras.â
Yea, but those boxy cameras used medium format film, that gives much better quality than the type 135 film used in 70â(TM)s Nikon cameras.
Also, Hasselblad heavily customized the cameras with radiation protection and usability improvements (like a big shutter button that can be used with spacesuit gloves).
Still, depending on what theyâ(TM)re used for, miniature format images can be perfectly usable, especially with current mul
Re: Boxy cameras (Score:1)
And Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t get Unicode right!
Firmware blocks cosmic rays? (Score:2)
The filename convention debate (Score:1)
This has been a topic long before "Y2K" and continues despite there being many "standard" methods.
https://datamanagement.hms.har... [harvard.edu].
https://www.edocpublish.com/is... [edocpublish.com].
I appreciate that Nikon is willing to go the extra mile and put in a few good lines of code to generate unique filenames. This is not a new problems.
Solution 1: This used to be the go-to. Monotonically increasing filenames. Format IMG_nx.type. (Example if n is 8 and x is hex and type is JPG we can get IMG_00000000.JPG through IMG_FFFFFFFF.
Re: (Score:2)
Nikon cameras, at least up to the 5000 range, still use 8.3 filenames. My guess would be that the change they've made is to remove the DSC_ prefix and switch to 8-digit numbers.
The cheaper boxy black. (Score:2)
Previously, the agency used boxy, black Hasselblad cameras."
As opposed to those sexy svelte nope-not-black-at-all Nikon cameras?
Just say Nikon underbid the competition already instead of shitting on one of the most famous makers of cameras that still manufactures today, and in many minds is the preferred choice. As if the NASA images coming from boxy, black cameras were complete crap or something.
On the other hand... (Score:2)
On the other hand you have a cosmic ray detector.