(meteorobs) 10th anniversary of the IMO Video Meteor Network

[Sirko Molau]

Folks,

at the 1998 IMC, I presented a first version of the meteor detection software
MetRec. In the following months, the software was further developed and new
functions were added. In early 1999 it had reached a maturity to try something
new: Instead of storing video meteor data from selected campaigns on video
tapes,
which were processed months later, I connected the intensified camera AVIS
installed at the balcony of my flat in Aachen directly to the computer and
processed the video signal online. The night of March 11/12, 1999, was clear,
and in the next morning I found out that MetRec had detected 17 meteors. This
observation, which happened to be exactly 10 years ago, marked the beginning of
the AKM video meteor network. I continued to run the setup in consecutive clear
nights. In July 1999, Jürgen Rendtel joined the effort, and also Ulrich Sperberg
and Mirko Nitschke provided occasional observations in 1999. By the end of the
year, more than 6000 meteors were collected in 1000 hours of observing time.
That's not much to modern standards were we typically collect more meteors and
observing time each month, but it was the start of the first video meteor
network, which was renamed five years later to IMO Video Meteor Network.

Best,
Sirko Molau

PS: Unfortunately, I cannot provide a picture of the first network meteor,
because I experienced a hard disc crash in Summer 1999. So only the PosDat data
survived from the first half year.

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