New Meteor Camera at observatory

[Terry Richardson]

We now have a dedicated meteor camera at the observatory. This is mounted on the side of the 14 inch dome facing west (and upwards!)

There is a worldwide network of these cameras which look at the sky from various positions and angles. From the network, meteor tracks can be triangulated and potential landfall sites identified. The aim is to count meteors, identify “storms” and ultimately recover any meteorite material.

CAS is now part of this network and will receive scientific recognition for any “discoveries”.

This camera runs continuous video during the night, then during the day it renders the video to a stack of those frames with meteors. This is then uploaded daily to the Global Meteor Network site.

This site can be accessed from  http://istrastream.com/rms-gmn/?country=NZ

It is listed near the bottom of the list as CAS  West Melton.

We have already detected some meteors.

I am happy to try to answer any questions.

Cheers

Terry

 

• This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Simon Lewis.

[John Pickering]

Congratulations Terry et al…. I’ve been tempted myself to have one of these, so great to see it up.

The picture shows several smaller streaks and a very bright one.  Is the bright one the ISS or another satellite?

How is the data being captured and used?

[Terry Richardson]

The software looks at the video and senses change of light. It measures difference between Max pixel and average pixel images. It selects those frames that have these changes, and  filters out satelites and other slow moving “lights”. Those frames selected are then compiled into the composite you see. The captured stack is all the selected frames and the detected stack is the filtered composite.

I think one of the detected sequences probably saw a meteor at the same time as a plane went past. You can see the paired wingtip strobes along the flight path.

The stacks are uploaded during the off time (day) to GMN where it is analysed and correlated with other cams nearby to verify sightings.

Individual data including thumbnails, time lapse, photometry and vector data can be seen by clicking on the camera number. Our data is not yet verified until they can calibrate our images with the actual stars. Hence not all data is available yet.

Global data can be seen by clicking on the GMN Icon top left. this reveals more data.

https://tammojan.github.io/meteormap/ will give a map and by clicking on the little stack (top left of picture) you can select fields of view.

Hope this helps. Enjoy exploring.

Terry

 

 

[Marc Bunyan]

quick link to the camera’s full capture information – this can also be access via the ‘CAS Resources’ menu at the top of the homepage.

– http://istrastream.com/rms-gmn/?id=NZ002F

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Marc Bunyan.

[Author]

Posts