David's Astronomy Pages NorthCam - Metaframe

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Introduction

'Metaframe' is a new image processing addition to the AstroNorthCam program, where it is used in association with images from the Observatory's  "NorthCam" Camera (Tapo C325WB Colour Night Vision Camera), which captures image of the north sky on 24x7 basis.

The new 'Metaframe' tool is inspired by Erik Bard's Metaframe processing shown on the TV Show "Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch", where it is used to try to document/highlight the observation & movements of UAP's and other phenonema (two examples pictures below are from Skinwalker Ranch Offical on Instagram)

Currently images from the "NorthCam" Camera are captured by the iSpy program every 1.2s,  but not all the information was previously being used.by AstroNorthCam :
 
- During the daytime just one of the raw frames in each 15s interval is saved as the representative image from the time window and used for creating videos and for automated bird detection .

- During the night time, the raw frame in each 15s interval are averaged in order to suppress camera noise and saved as the representative image from the time window and used for creating videos and for automated star detection / star count.

The new 'Metaframe' tool runs in parallel to the existing standard imaging routines, but utilises each and every raw frame and in several different ways.

In 2 minute windows and in 10 minute windows, the tool ingests the raw frames on the roughly 1s cadences and accumulates data is a series of 1D arrays, specifically MinR, MaxR, SumR, SumR^2 for Red and their equivalents G and B arrays for Green and Blue. At end of each window period, the arrays are used to generate a number of Metaframe pictures files:   Minimum (Min), Maximum (Max), Mean (Mean),   Variance (Var),   Normalised Skew (Skew), Change Count (Change), and B,G Wave (Wave). In addition one of the Metaframe picture types can be viewed as live picture (updated every 20s). 

AstroNorthCam's new Metaframe tool showing a live 'Min' metaframe product (2026-06-22 16:30)

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Metaframe examples - Daytime

Metaframe Examples from a 10 minute interval ( 2026-06-22 08:50 to 09:00)

Raw frame at 08:50 One of around 600 raw frames captured from camera during the 10 min interval

Normal Picture at 08:55 One of 40 saved every 15s during the 10 min interval

Mean Metaframe (Mean)  - 10m

Maximum Metaframe (Max)  - 10m

Minimum Metaframe (Min)  - 2m (08:54 to 08:56)

Minimum Metaframe (Min)  - 2m (08:58 to 09:00)

Minimum Metaframe (Min) - 10m (08:50 to 09:00)

Normalised Skew Metaframe (Skew)  - 10m

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 10m

Blue Variance Metaframe (Wave)  - 10m

Change Count Metaframe (Change)  - 10m

Metaframe Examples from a 2 minute interval ( 2026-06-21 16:44 to 16:46)

Normal Picture at 16:44,  << 1s 1 of 8 normal pictures saved during the 2 min interval (one each 15s)

Minimum Metaframe (Min)  - 16:44  +2m

Maximum Metaframe (Max)  - 16:44  +2m

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 16:44  +2m

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 16:46  +2m

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 16:48  +2m

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 16:40  +10m

Metaframe Examples from a 2 minute interval  (2026-06-20 02:40)

Normal Picture at 02:40,  << 1s

Variance Metaframe (Var)  - 02:40  +2m

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