Meteor Network

[Rick]

About a month ago, while the Perseids were putting on their annual show, I placed a bunch of orders for bits of kit to put together as a meteor camera. The image collection device is a Sony IMX291 camera with a 4mm lens, and the processing device is a Pi 4. It took a while for the bits to arrive, and a while longer for me to put them all together and get them working. I finally attached the camera to the side of my house last weekend, and the system is now calibrated and ready to run.

Most of the information needed to set the thing up is on the Gloobal Meteor Network wiki ( https://globalmeteornetwork.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ). There are also pointers on the UK Meteor Network website ( https //ukmeteornetwork co uk ).

I've a clear view out towards the north, and this is the coverage map for my camera.



The largest area is for meteors at about 100 kms altitude. The other two areas are for meteors at around 70 kms and 25 kms altitude. Most meteors won't get much lower than 70 kms.

On Monday night the system spotted 122 events, and last night it spotted 195, so there's quite a lot dropping out of the sky at the moment. Here's my pick of the night:



Of course, the forecast for most of the rest of the week is not so great, and I suspect my camera weatherproofing may get a bit of testing, but the main point of the system is that it mostly gets on with the observing by itself, without needing too much intervention, and if the sky clears in the early hours the camera will be there to look out for meteors.

[Roberto]

That is really cool.  Check this guy out in near Minsk:  https://www.astrobin.com/users/Astronominsk/
I wonder if he is part of a wider European network.

See for example this one: 

Roberto

[Rick]

Couldn't find a corresponding station this GMN list ( http://istrastream.com/rms-gmn/ ), but there are multiple meteor monitoring networks, so he may belong to a different one, or his camera may not have reported in for a while.

(Heute Nacht ist es bewölkt.)

[MarkS]

It looks like a great project Rick and really interesting.  It's the kind of thing I really should attach to my observatory.

Mark

[Rick]

Not a lot of work involved, but a few minor gotchas to be avoided, especially with the camera hardware. I think my total came in at under 200 quid,  but I did re-purpose one or two things. Some folk have put the entire set-up into a camera housing that just needs a PoE cable, but the Pi 4 gets quite warm...

[Hugh]

A great project, Rick.  Look forward to some updates soon!

Thanks also for the 'Minsk' link Roberto ~ some cracking Moon pictures amongst his portfolio.

Best

Hugh

[Rick]

I think my total came in at under 200 quid, but I did re-purpose one or two things.

Not quite under 200, but plenty of change from 250, partly because I ended up getting a 4GB Pi 4 and a fast 128GB SD card rather than the 2GB Pi 4 and 64GB SD card that's the present minimum recommendation.

[Carole]

Some great results.

Carole

[Rick]

I've been impressed by the way the system can grab data through holes in the clouds. Each morning it produces a stack of the frames on which it thinks there are meteors it has managed to calibrate against the starry background. Last night was the first night it failed to see any. I'm not totally convinced by the meteors it spotted on some nights, but it has certainly picked out one or two through holes in the clouds.

[Rick]

Finally got the system hooked up to a couple of archive sites:

The main GMN archive site at http://istrastream.com/rms-gmn/
The GMN site has timelapse video and a whole lot else if you look at an individual station's page.

The UKMON archive at https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/latest/index.html
The UKMON "Live" site ( https://ukmeteors.co.uk/live/#/ ) will also be getting images from it.

[Rick]

...and it's interesting to see what comes out of the data the system uploads. The UKMon system comes up with orbits for meteors for which it has sufficient matches. One particularly bright meteor my camera caught just over a week ago ended up being analysed thus:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2021/orbits/202109/20210923_034637.914_UK/index.html

Turns out it was a sporadic (not associated with any particular shower).

[Rick]

Three more from the night of 1st/2nd October. The first was fairly faint, a sporadic with its aphelion in the asteroid belt and perihelion near the orbitof Venus:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2021/orbits/202110/20211001/20211001_213248.393_UK/index.html

The second was rather more spectacular, and was a sporadic with its aphelion out beyond Jupiter and perihelion between the orbits of Venus and Mercury:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2021/orbits/202110/20211001/20211001_220127.105_UK/index.html

One rather different one was this (though it wasn't as spectacular), which came in from outside the solar system from well above the ecliptic and met the Earth rather than diving underneath and then swinging back up and out:

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2021/orbits/202110/20211001/20211001_195907.725_UK/index.html

[Hugh]

Amazing info Rick.  The third one came all the way from outside the SS to end its days here 

Hugh

[Rick]

The interesting information comes out because there are enough cameras monitoring the sky that some meteors get seen by several cameras in different locations, and that allows trajectories to be calculated with some accuracy. That in turn allows the interesting oddballs to be spotted. Without the triangulation it may be pretty, but not much else.

One of the things to come out if this kind of data collection is the discovery or refining of known meteor showers. In the last few days there's been talk of one in the southern hemisphere (far enough south that it's not one we'd see any meteors from) associated with Comet 15P/Finlay. The radiant's in Ara, so they're dubbed the "Arids"... (See here.)

[Rick]

Incidentally, there's an article about meteor monitoring starting on page 36 of the October issue of Astronomy Now (which came out last month).