A multifunctional sky camera system and techniques for the use thereof for total sky imaging and spectral irradiance/radiance measurement are provided. In one aspect, a sky camera system is provided. The sky camera system includes an objective lens having a field of view of greater than about 170 degrees; a spatial light modulator at an image plane of the objective lens, wherein the spatial light modulator is configured to attenuate light from objects in images captured by the objective lens; a semiconductor image sensor; and one or more relay lens configured to project the images from the spatial light modulator to the semiconductor image sensor. Techniques for use of the one or more of the sky camera systems for optical flow based cloud tracking and three-dimensional cloud analysis are also provided.
展开▼