Time-lapse Imaging for Studying Atmospheric Refraction: Measurements with Natural Targets

In this paper, we discuss developments in using natural targets (terrain and vegetation features) for refractive studies. Natural targets provide for the opportunity to study refraction in rural settings. One camera system was deployed at a remote location in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and was pointed at a natural desert landscape focusing on a mountain range. Day and night images from this system were collected from January 2018 to February 2018. A second camera system is currently stationed in the desert of the Jornada Experimental Range in New Mexico, focusing on a mountain range and desert valley. This system was set up in May 2018 with a planned operation of one year. We describe a point tracking image processing approach and present refraction analyses of the images from the time lapse systems. We discuss corrections for camera motion and correlations with meteorological data.