1. A method for determining the distance between an image acquisition system encompassing an image sensor and a luminous object moving relative to the image acquisition system, the method comprising: generating, using the image sensor, an image of surroundings of the image sensor encompassing a luminous object; after the image has been generated, selecting at least one luminous object of interest from the image generated by the image sensor; for the selected luminous object, sensing a tailing of the image of the selected luminous object, where tailing occurs as a consequence of control properties of the image sensor and a relative velocity between the image sensor and the luminous object; and associating a magnitude of the tailing with a distance value; wherein from an acquisition time interval of the images of the sensor, and from a change in a relative size of the object in the image, a time to adjacency is determined based on an acquisition time interval of the images and a scale change.