NavList:

Bill Lionheart, you  wrote:
"My thought is that digital image stabilization has improved on cameras (perhaps thanks to smart phones), and stabilized platforms for video cameras are also available at a consumer level now (for accounting for larger motions where the object of interest would go out of view)."

Interesting idea! And there's a good chance that this exists in some cheap package (ready to be built into the next smartphone on the market). Does anyone have any experience with image stablization?

Meanwhile, I just had a related thought. Suppose I stick six cameras on the faces of a little cube (I'm thinking 10cm on a side). I toss it up in the air. It spins and rolls rather randomly and captures continuous imagery, simultaneous imagery from each of its cameras but with no other hardware, e.g. inertial system, for determining a local vertical. It drops back into my hand (it's on the end of a rubber band, or maybe it's a drone, too, and it flies back to my hand!). It does a little image processing and some onboard celestial calculations, and then it displays the latitude and longitude. Like magic. Ta-daaa. That's either feasible today or within a very short period of time.

Frank Reed