Close Range Remote Sensing of Levitated Dust Particles

A simple technique is highlighted to demonstrate how to detect and establish the coordinates of moving dust particles, in proximity to a single camera. This could be applied to planetary landers and rovers, or used from low orbit around comets and dusty asteroids. The only requirement would be the addition of a LED flash bulb close to the camera lens resulting in near zero phase illumination lighting conditions. Using this simple low cost, low mass setup, the 3D trajectory, colour, and other physical parameters of micron scale dust particles could be determined.