(meteorobs) All sky cameras

[stange]

Yes Ed, Good question.

My sole purpose for higher sensitivity is to bring out pre and post trailing 
which causes Sentinel to capture MORE of the fireball characterization. It 
does however have a down side as mentioned by Chris. The ablation & 
detonation is wider and brighter. I accept this in my effort to detect 
persistant trains, detonation products, and more accurate start & ending 
positioning of the meteor/fireball flight path, or a cooling meteorite on 
its way down.

I don't recommend this for everyone. That is another reason (1 of 3) why I 
run a second software system which has no enhancement that is connected 
directly to the Sentinel camera with an active coupler with no gain.

The 3 reasons are:
1. Capture of any fireballs during Sentinel reset time of ~30 seconds.
2. Full capture of flight time not limited to Sentinels 7 seconds.
3. Normal(visually close) light intensity levels.

YCSentinel


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Majden" <epmajden at shaw.ca>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: 2009/05/12 12:48
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) All sky cameras


> Larry et all:
> What is your purpose for recording meteors in this magnitude range?
> If your doing meteor flux studies or a program that Sirko Molau heads
> you need to reach fainter magnitudes than these all-sky cameras are
> capable of.  In this case you either have to use a sensitive ccd
> camera with a small field of view or use an image intensifier
> system.  The purpose of the Sandia System as I understand it is to
> detect meteor dropping fireballs.  If there is another purpose, what
> is it?
> Ed Majden
>
>
> On 12-May-09, at 12:15 PM, stange wrote:
>
>> I have to agree with Chris and Thomas.
>>
>> In the main, the PC164C's are superior to the Sentinel camera in
>> both focus
>> crispness and sensitivity by about 1 to 2 magnitudes. I tested both
>> cameras
>> with Sentinel software here under my poor Mag 2.5 City light
>> conditions.
>>
>> Using my Sentinel at a higher software brightness level of 150,
>> (where 128
>> is the normal range), I can routinely detect fireballs of mag 0 and
>> sometimes mag 1. Basically it will detect fireballs almost as dim
>> as the
>> dimmest star that is visible in your starfield if your sensitivity
>> setting
>> is close to your threshold setting. Unfortunately getting too close to
>> threshold settings cause false triggers from other sources.
>>
>> So for this station in Yuba City..... mag 0 and is the limiting
>> magnitude.
>>
>>
>> YCSentinel
>> (Just got on a temp. dial up line. DSL "maybe" Thurs. night.)
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "drobnock" <drobnock at penn.com>
>> To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
>> Sent: 2009/05/12 06:10
>> Subject: (meteorobs) All sky cameras
>>
>>
>>> A question to those using all sky cameras to observe fireballs,
>>> what is
>>> the visual  limiting magnitude of the camera? And what is the
>>> limit of
>>> the meteor or fireball that can be recorded?
>>>
>>> Also for Thomas Ashcraft, for the VLF/VHF/Visual recording you have
>>> presented, what is the limiting visual magnitude of your system?
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>>
>>> George John Drobnock
>>>
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