(meteorobs) Chris(Cloudbait) Meteor Telescope?

[weryk]

Hi Wes,

> 	Head images are difficult.  The way it is being done at the
> University of Western Ontario is to use a moderate field intensified
> video camera to locate a meteor in the usual manner followed by
> computerized telescopic tracking with equipment by Peter Gural.  The
> equipment is an improvement in the AIM-IT system used to produce the
> Leonid MAC head image referenced in the earlier note by Leo S.
> http://reentry.arc.nasa.gov/s-gural.html
> 
> 	The magic happens when the intensified video images are
> processed in real time to detect and locate the meteor and to drive a
> steering mirror in front of a moderate aperture telescope.  The
> telescopic images are then stabilized and tracked in the telescope
> yielding the head images.   Not easy or cheep but numerous images have
> been obtained this way.   Peter Brown of UWO is in charge of this and
> preliminary results should be available soon.

It's actually Margaret Campbell-Brown and Paul Wiegert's project, 
and I've been doing the system integration work.

I've posted some example meteors (as seen by both cameras -- the 
wide field is ~28 deg FOV and the telescope is ~1.5 deg FOV) here 
if anyone is interested (they are compressed using XviD - the 
windoze codec is also there if anyone needs it) :

	http://gigantid.physics.uwo.ca/~weryk/meteors/

There are still a few minor issues to work out, but otherwise I 
hope to bring the system online quite soon.  It should tell us a 
great deal about meteoroid fragmentation, meteor wake, 
initial meteor trail width, etc, etc...

  Rob Weryk
  UWO Meteor Group