Unlike regular cameras, event-based ones only record moments when light becomes brighter or dimmer. They don't produce snapshots; instead, they send an endless stream of such flashes. Scientists turned this stream into a sharp picture of the Earth while flying over it on a satellite. Each flash is like a piece of a mosaic; together they form a still image. To remove noise, they use a mathematical trick familiar to astronomers: like when searching for planets around other stars using the eclipse method, where they also gather crumbs of light. Tests with a sensor on board the ISS showed: the method excellently reconstructs large details — clouds, islands, shores. Small ripples and noise are discarded. This promises sharper and faster cameras for robots and cars.
In one microsecond, light travels only 300 meters, and an event-based camera can catch such a flash.
Assembling a whole from scattered scraps is a task worthy of Solaris's ocean, which communicated in fragments of images.