Camera calibration from a single night sky image

We present a simple and universal camera calibration method. Instead of extensive setups we are exploiting the accurate angular positions of fixed stars. High precision is achieved by compensating the interfering error sources. Our approach uses a star catalog and requires a single input image only. No additional user input information such as focal length, exposure date or position is required. Fully automatic processing and fast convergence is achieved by performing three consecutive steps. First, a star segmentation and centroid finding algorithm extracts the sub-pixel positions of the luminaries. Second, an initial solution for the most essential parameters is determined by combinatorial analysis. Finally, the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is applied to solve the resulting non-linear system. Experimental results with several digital consumer cameras demonstrate high robustness and accuracy. The introduced method is advisable for applications where large calibration targets are required.