Abstract: A method for visual monitoring atmospheric disturbance caused by flight of moving objects in the atmosphere was established, including three parts: light transmission in atmospheric disturbance, method of monitoring light deflection in atmospheric disturbance, and high-precision disturbance detection method. Firstly, starting from the analysis of the principle of light deflection caused by atmospheric disturbance, calculation methods of refractive index, refractive index gradient, and light deflection transmission were researched; Secondly, based on principle of Background Oriented Schlieren, method for analyzing the influence of various parameters on monitoring system performance was proposed; Finally, integral pixel search and sub-pixel location were used to form the high-precision detection method for detecting atmospheric disturbance. Related mathematical models for those three methods were established respectively and simulation analyses were developed respectively. The results show that this method provides an important method and way to visually monitor the interaction of spacecraft with the atmosphere during the process of returning to the atmosphere, landing deceleration, parachute power deployment, and passenger plane supersonic flight.The results of this paper provide an important method and approach to monitor atmospheric disturbance for optimizing aerodynamic shape.