Meteor Detection Data Updated - End of 2010

The high level data summary page has been updated for the remaining months in 2010, October, November and December. 

December was a record month with 79 Meteors detected! 

This is of course due to the relatively clear skies over Melbourne during the summer months. October was plagued with a cable problem when the polycarbonate roof was replaced and all cable were re-routed through conduit around the house. The main data cable was not plugged in for 8 days!

On the positive side, since the automated Microsoft updates was turned off in Windows 7 the system has not failed to boot once. Lots of experience was gained in 2010 so hopefully 2011 will lead to higher meteor counts and a smoother running remote Meteor Hunter observatory!

Happy New Year from Meteor Hunter!

End of Astrovid

My Astrovid Fireball Camera has performed admirably over 2010 and is still going strong! Unfortunately it is a collector's item of sorts as the company that made the Fireball camera, Astrovid (Adirondack Video Astronomy or AVA) disappeared during 2010. 

I was curious what happened to Astrovid, and more so the Fireball camera product range, so I did some investigation and emailing over the last few months. The following is what I discovered.

April 21st 2010 

This was close to the last date that the AVA web site was operational with the familiar Astrovid home page.

25th May 2010 

Around this date the Astrovid web site was removed, only to be replaced by an 'under construction' message... 

15th November 2010 

From this date onwards, and perhaps earlier, the Astrovid web site is completely dead.

30th November 2010

After some Googling around, I found a hint on a local Australian company called Telescope and Astronomy that were still selling Astovid StellaCams. The web site had the following banner that pointed to a new company called CosmoLogic Systems that appear to have taken over the StellaCam range.

On checking the CosmoLogic Systems web site, it too was under construction however, it does at least have a notice explaining the demise of Astrovid "Due to the difficult economic situation, AVA has ceased its operation, but the Astrovid product line will still continue through CosmoLogic Systems.". 

Perhaps the Fireball camera lives on? I decided to email CosmoLogic Systems and got a prompt reply:

"Yes, we are taking over some of the Astrovid line - specifically the StellaCam3, the Wat-902H Ultimate and all related accessories including the wireless controller.  We do not plan on offering the Fireball Cam, as there was very little demand for them - I think only a couple of them were sold over the period of a year.  Anyone interested in a Fireball Cam type arrangement could simply house a Wat-902H (or StellaCam3) camera inside a security camera housing.

Thank you for your interest in our products.

Best regards,

CosmoLogic Systems"

So it is official. There will be no more Fireball camera's :( 

The last point in CosmoLogic Systems reply is valid of course and you could certainly build your own, and in fact most amateur Meteor Hunters do, however it does take extra resources and effort as a pose to simply purchasing a working system of the shelf. Once I am ready to add more camera's it looks as though I will have to do exactly that, build a system out of parts, unless another astronomy supply company is willing to step into the small and esoteric market of amateur Meteor Hunters :)

My Fireball Camera lives on!

As a farewell to Astrovid in 2010, here a few interesting pics of my Fireball cam in different Melbourne weather conditions. From cold rainy winter days to scorching summer days like today where the temperature is 38 degrees Celsius!

The Fireball cam gets a new resident. Apparently trying to clean the cobwebs away just results in them coming back a few days later. As long as the spider stays away from the front of the camera there should be  no real problem.

The Fireball camera (and the resident spider) is constantly exposed to heavy rain in the winter months in Melbourne.

A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Another hot summer day. In this picture you can see the Moon behind the camera, although the camera itself has been set up never to image the moon by pointing it at the south celestial pole.

Meteor Detection Data Updated

The high level data summary page has been updated for the months of July, August and September.  July was a good detection month, despite July being mid-winter in Melbourne, with 49 meteor detections. Overall the months of August and September were very disappointing. 

August had a total of eight days where the system was down. The cause was determined to be the automated Microsoft updates being installed in Windows 7, which have now been switched off. On rebooting, the system would come up with the automated Startup Repair dialog boxes, as shown below. Hopefully this issue won't come up again.

This issue highlighted a significant problem with operating a remote automated system, that of being able to monitor the system's status. Currently I rely on the UFO Capture software to send periodic emails, once every few hours, like a heartbeat signal. This works well if I am able to access my email and remember to check for the last Meteor Hunter system email. This method of checking is a passive method, it requires me to perform some action to determine the system status. On a day to day basis this just isn't reliable, as like most people, I am too busy to maintain a consistent monitoring effort.

I have started writing some software to monitor the health of the system and to actively notify me of any problems. This would be a much better approach and should result in faster turn around time to resolve any issues. I'll write more about it when I have completed and tested the initial version of the monitoring system. It will take some time to do properly, but should be worth the effort.

Data Summary Page published

It's been a while since the last post, but I have been busy working on the Meteor Hunter system. In Melbourne the destroyed polycarbonate roof is still being replaced. In the meantime, all the camera cables have been re-routed through proper conduits to improve their long term survivability.

Also I have spent some time collating all the meteor data collected so far from February to end of June. A high level summary of the data has been posted and work has begun on using UFO Analysis to analyse individual meteors.

Lastly this blog has been given a quick facelift thanks to some cool new templates posted by Blogger, hope you like it.

System Architecture Page published

I have added a permanent System Architecture Page to detail the overall system setup. On that page you can also find some system timing diagrams and a list of all hardware and software used by this system.

Melbourne Storms

Melbourne had its biggest storm on record yesterday. Hail the size of golf balls pelted down onto the camera and surrounding roof. It sounded like gun fire. Our family car was dinted and the polycarbonate roof next to the meteor camera was riddled with holes.

Somehow my meteor camera has survived and remains functional. As the storm occurred during the day it did not capture any images of the storm. I'm just grateful it is OK as the camera was only installed for a few weeks...a testament to its all weather construction.

Today it was bucketing down again, but luckily no hail. Now that the roof is so damaged, the water just pours onto the patio!

Permanent Mounting for the Meteor Camera

Finally I have a permanent mounting for the camera, complete with a custom made bracket. The mounting allows the camera aim to be adjusted, which is handy during installation. I don’t intend to move it once it’s in position.

I decided to point the camera at the South Celestial Pole (SCP) for several reasons:
- There will always be reference stars in the FOV
- There is no risk of the Sun shining directly into the camera
- Light pollution from the Moon is minimised

Using the scintillation mask once more from UFO Capture, I was able to exaggerate the stars that could be detected by the camera in the following image. That allowed me to identify the stars and pin point where the camera was aimed at.

White dots circled in red are actually hot pixels, determined from a dark frame image shown on a previous post. The camera is pointing slightly off from the SCP but it’s good enough for what we need. I used Starry Night Pro 4.5 to manually identify the stars in the image. I first tried overlaying multiple layers of the Starry Night image and the actual image from the camera but found that I could not match them 100%, I suspect that there is slight image distortion from the glass and perspex lens of the housing. Nevertheless, the image is close enough to accurately match the star patterns.

Note that the the faintest star that was masked consistently by the scintillation function of UFO Capture was at an  apparent magnitude of  6.12, identified as HIP109584 (circled in dark blue in the image). Hopefully this means that I can get consistent meteor detections down to an apparent magnitude of 6 all year round, weather and seeing conditions permitting.

I also used Starry Night to measure the angular separation between a few reference stars to get a feel for the FOV and these are drawn as yellow lines in the image.