Realistic Rendering and Reconstruction of Astronomical Objects and an Augmented Reality Application for Astronomy

These days, there is an ever increasing need for realistic models, renderings and visualization of astronomical objects to be used in planetarium and as a tool in modern astrophysical research. One of the major goals of this dissertation is to develop novel algorithms for recovering and rendering 3D models of a specific set of astronomical objects. We first present a method to render the color and shape of the solar disc in different climate conditions as well as for different height to temperature atmospheric profiles. We then present a method to render and reconstruct the 3D distribution of reflection nebulae. The rendering model takes into account scattering and absorption to generate physically realistic visualization of reflection nebulae. Further, we propose a reconstruction method for another type of astronomical objects, planetary nebulae. We also present a novel augmented reality application called the augmented astronomical telescope, tailored for educational astronomy. The real-time application augments the view through a telescope by projecting additional information such as images, text and video related to the currently observed object during observation. All methods previously proposed for rendering and reconstructing astronomical objects can be used to create novel content for the presented augmented reality application.