(meteorobs) 2008 Orionids

[stange]

Addendum to my post.

Sentinel can(iand does) miss major Bolides(exploding fireballs), during its 
long period reset and arming. These are captured with the second systems 
very short re-arming period.

If it wasn't for my growing Northern tree line.... I would be completely 
satisfied.
YCSentinel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "stange" <stange34 at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: 2008/10/24 21:32
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) 2008 Orionids


> Ed and others,
>
> Not all of us have the dark skies of high altitude or desert dark sky
> locations which enable enough stars to be captured with a meteor to be 
> used
> for triangulation. For those of us with poor star capture, even with
> co-adding 10 frames with Sentinel, camera alignment is the only 
> (practicle)
> solution. (Azimuth error of my station is at present 1.5 degrees maximum 
> and
> has not been readjusted in about 2 years). 1 degree was the original 
> error.
>
> The capture of weak meteors with all sky cameras can be enhanced using a
> dual monitoring system such as is illustrated in my system diagram. It is
> the best way to go with regard to cost. The faint, and extremely fast, &
> short, meteor captures will more than impress anyone that tries a test
> augmentation of their current low light camera. The eye would not be able 
> to
> detect many of these brief meteors, let alone their positions in the sky. 
> It
> is even hard to keep up with them on playback because they are so fast and
> short.
>
> I have absolutely no idea on just how good star capture would be using 
> this
> system in a dark sky enviornment or to what degree faint meteor captures
> would be improved.
>
> The capture settings on the parallel second monitoring system are so
> sensitive that it cannot even begin capturing meteors until 2 hours after
> Sentinel is running at ~ 6 PM.because of light washout.
>
> For gen. info I add my Sentinel settings & the Parallel system settings.
> Diagram on my site.
>
> ....(Sentinel).......................................................(Handyavi)
> Brightness = 160...........................................Brightness = 
> 6400
> Contrast = 139..............................................Contrast = 
> 6000
> Delay = 8......................................................Sensitivity 
> =
> 88.0
> Trig. Thresh. = 8............................................Preframes = 7
> UnTrig. Thresh = 2........................................Postframes = 11
> Default Mask Value = 27...............................
>
> I hope this comes out in verticle columns in this post.  -YCSentinel (with
> City skies)
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
> To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
> Sent: 2008/10/24 17:01
> Subject: Re: (meteorobs) 2008 Orionids
>
>
>> Hi Ed-
>>
>> Most internally integrating video cameras are on the pricey side. I find
>> the
>> best meteor sensitivity at full video rates. With a Watec 120N, dropping
>> below 30fps brings out the stars better, but I miss dim meteors. So the
>> only
>> reason to use a camera like this for meteor work is to collect an
>> astrometric reference along with a meteor detection. But you can actually
>> do
>> that pretty well by just collecting a few seconds of ordinary video and
>> integrating them externally. Not as clean as internal integration, but
>> you'll get 50 stars or more, which is plenty for astrometric calibration.
>>
>> In general, I don't think you can do better than a PC164C if you're okay
>> with a 1/3" sensor, otherwise a Watec 902HS. Both are pretty inexpensive.
>>
>> BTW, I'd ignore the lux specs. They are pretty meaningless. The old PC23C
>> is
>> only about a magnitude less sensitive to meteors than the PC164C, even
>> though its lux rating is something like 100 times lower. I've seen 0.1 
>> lux
>> cameras that are more sensitive than 0.001 lux cameras.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> *****************************************
>> Chris L Peterson
>> Cloudbait Observatory
>> http://www.cloudbait.com
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Ed Majden" <epmajden at shaw.ca>
>> To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
>> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 9:36 AM
>> Subject: Re: (meteorobs) 2008 Orionids
>>
>>
>>> Depending on the specs you look at these cameras have the same low
>>> lux sensitivity 0.0003 at f1.2 - 1/60 sec.  What we need is a camera
>>> where you can control exposure length, i.e. 1/30 sec or better 1/15
>>> sec exposure.  Such a system may not be more sensitive recording
>>> moving objects (meteors) but they should be capable of recording more
>>> background stars for reference points for measurement.  The film
>>> based MORP Cameras used chopping shutters with a chopping rate of 4X
>>> per second.  A bit on the low side for velocities but Ian Halliday
>>> used these rates successfully for his Fireball Network.    Anyone
>>> know where one can find a video camera with low lux capability with
>>> exposure length control that will not break the bank?
>>> Ed Majden
>>
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