NASA using space technology to help find kidnapping victim

[CGLearner]

Wow ... NASA's technology sure can be handy sometimes... :applause:

[KingMob]

this kidnapping happened in my hometown about 5 blocks from me.

I hope they find her safe and all is ok. very tragic.

[WhiteRabbitObj]

Well they have the guy they're pretty sure did it. Apparently he isn't cooperating at all... so if he's got her stashed somewhere and he's in jail, she's got limited time. Nice that it's in Florida... those interrogators need to explain the concept of "Old Sparky" to him and what happens to kidnappers who let their victims die.

[Dennik]

So who else are they watching from up there when there are no kidnappers around?

[FloydBishop]

Originally posted by Dennik
So who else are they watching from up there when there are no kidnappers around?

The images NASA is helping to amplify came from a security camera located at a car wash. It would be interesting to see the before and after images from that camera to see just what NASA was able to do.

[eirenicon]

Oh no... yet more reason for movies to use "super insta-clear zoom technology" on photographs. "NASA does it!"

[CGLearner]

Can you imagine all the shocked people now?

"What's up with NASA? It took them weeks to make that image clearer, when I know it can be done in minutes!! After all, I watch (insert favorite crime/investigation series here)"

It sounds like a conspiracy!! :eek:

That, or NASA isn't based in Hollywood! :cool:

[PROVIDE3D]

Unfortunatelly we got terrible news today:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4146010/

[SuperMax]

Yeah, just read it on Yahoo news, terrible.


I only saw the video while i was passing through my lounge room a few days ago. I toook a quick glance at the TV and they were showing the survielance video on the news. Didnt take much notice.

It was just now that i was browsing though Yahoo and again took a quick glance at the headline and it shook me up. I quickly remembered the girl from the survailence video.

[FloydBishop]

Hopefully, the technology used to intensify the image in this case will now be made faster and become more widely available. It's a shame to hear about cases like this, but the technology will hopefully improve as a result.

[RockinAkin]

Just saw this on the news.

I cant imagine how this must be for her family and friends.
May they find the strength to continue on after this.

At least they have the kidnapper in custody,
I hope they really F*uck him up for what he's done. (Excuse the language)

[Dearmad]

So, is this part a red herring or what?

------
Investigators had called on NASA (news - web sites) to sharpen and enlarge images of the abduction, but they said the quality wasn't much better than what they already had.
----------

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/abduction_filmed

[jud]

I saw the video on a news channel over here and thought no more of it,but now that I have read the links...... it just numbs my very soul.

??

jud

[WhiteRabbitObj]

Originally posted by Dearmad
So, is this part a red herring or what?

------
Investigators had called on NASA (news - web sites) to sharpen and enlarge images of the abduction, but they said the quality wasn't much better than what they already had.
----------

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/abduction_filmed

Of course. I was pretty amused by the assertions on the news that "NASA had used its technology to clarify the image!" There is only a certain amount of data present and you cannot pull out stuff that isn't there. The only thing you could really do in the case of a surveillance video is to de-interlace it and clean up the color and histogram, you can't magically make it more visible! I definitely think that movies have been bad since apparently even investigators think that its possible to just send the video off and get it back and have all this new stuff to study.

[FloydBishop]

There are some things that can be done though to help clarify things.

If you had some experts on the video, they could color correct things to get an accurate description of the suspect (he has blond hair, not red, etc).

You could also try to stabilize things. I remember seeing a bit of behind the scenes stuff from the Forensic Files (one of my friends from college married one of the producers of the show) where they showed video that had been taken from a very bouncy camera.

The video was of a car that sped away after a pretty violent hit and run was caught on tape. The camera man had a few frames of footage of the back end of the car as it sped away and he ran for cover.

The police on the case used a new (at the time) technology where they could focus in on the license plate in each frame, stabilize the rest of the frames around that area, moving each one until the license plate was at the same spot on the screen in each frame, and then run pass after pass on the footage until the plate was almost 100% readable. They came up with only two possible plate numbers, and only one was registered to a vehicle that matched the description. They had an address and phone number of where to find the guilty party in a little over a day.

Pretty impressive.

[runejw]

Surveillance cameras are on average quite low-res, so actually not very good as evidence-proof devices.

One can hope that the cheap megapixel cameras available today coupled with harddisk-recording will filter down to surveillance cameras over time, but until that happens low-res, worn-out, noisy VHS-tapes are probably the norm...

A blocky low-res picture per def has a lot of info missing. Modern techniques can improve on that if multiple factors like the environment, a film-sequence or physical characteristics are factored in, but if the resolution is too low and the sequence is short and of poor/noisy quality - limited sharpening can be synthesized. (Unless entering the field of guessimation, in which case one would effectively go back to a form of "lynch-mob justice".)

Watched an intriguing scientific program about dogs the other days. They tracked one person that had an identical twin - where DNA is the same and noone can see the (visual) difference - but dogs can smell the difference even when the twins have slept in the same bed and then crossed each other's paths in a field. So dogs with 10 000 times more sensitive nose than humans can tell the difference from smell alone... intriguing...

"Lab dogs" are also now being used to clear areas for mines left after wars - trained personnel go out on a dry day, vacuum some dust from an area, take it to the lab and let the dogs smell for explosives -> 4 dogs have to make the same result -> 100% accuracy.

Shows that "lo-tech" can be better than "hi-tech".



Cheers,
Rune

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