Camera Images Hydrogen Fires in Three Wavelength Bands

A special-purpose multispectral video camera has been designed to provide an enhanced capability for viewing hydrogen fires. Hydrogen fires do not emit sufficient visible light to be seen by the unaided human eye, but they do emit strongly at other wavelengths — especially in the infrared and near-infrared portions of the spectrum. Therefore, like some other video cameras developed previously for the same purpose, this camera is designed to respond to infrared light emitted by hot water molecules in hydrogen flames. Going beyond previous designs, this camera provides a combination of imaging in three wavelength bands and processing of the three images, all for the purposes of (1) reducing spurious responses to background light and solar radiation, and (2) synthesizing an image of a hydrogen flame overlaid on an ordinary visible-light image of the scene that contains the flame.