(meteorobs) R: FIREBALLS web site online

[fzanotti1 at alice.it]

Hi Bill Cooke,

the camera is 1/2" CCD and lens 1/3"? Not vigneting?

Thanks and Best Regards

Ferruccio Zanotti

IMTN
( Italian Meteor and TLE Network )
http://meteore.forumattivo.com/




----Messaggio originale----
Da: william.j.cooke at nasa.gov
Data: 17-nov-2010 18.58
A: "Global Meteor Observing Forum"<meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Ogg: (meteorobs) FIREBALLS web site online

After resolving some technical issues and mucho battles with the bureaucracy, I have finally managed to establish a public web presence which displays observations made by the NASA all sky cameras. It should update automatically by 9 AM Central time each day. Simply click on the date, and it will display the information for the events - if any - recorded by the system for that UT day. November 15 is an anomaly, displaying results for multiple days (a result of the manual debugging process).

The url is http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov

<http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/>A rough description of the available information is at http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/helpme.html

Some additional stuff:

1) This is a 1st cut, which will slowly improve over time. There will be bugs and issues, especially in the beginning. I welcome any comments and suggestions you wish to make. Please bear in mind that I am a scientist/engineer, not a web master. I have no sense of style, as my girlfriend will tell you.

2) The site contains event information for the past 20 days.

3) We only have 2 cameras now, but I plan on deploying 13 more to locations east of the Mississippi River in the coming months. Sandia and Chris Peterson have the western U.S. well-covered, so I am going to put the NASA systems in the east, where there are very few cameras. I expect #3 to be established in a month or so, followed by the others. The NASA cameras will be added to the page as they are deployed.

4) The "Live View" is not really a live view, but displays an image from the cameras taken at 30 minute intervals. During the day, the cameras are off and the live view will display the last image acquired before sun up.

5) The software will record passes of the International Space Station, which will be displayed as a series of events with an altitude of about 380 km and a speed of 8 km/s.

6) If you make use of any of the data, please let me know and give credit to the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office. In the case of the orbital data, please cite the below in your references.

Borovicka J.: The comparison of two methods of determining meteor trajectories from photographs. Bull. Astron. Instit. Czechoslovakia 41, 391–396 (1990)

I owe much to the University of Western Ontario Meteor Physics Group in this effort.  My thanks to Czech meteor group, especially Jiri Borovika, for allowing me to use the MILIG code.

Bill Cooke
Lead, NASA Meteoroid Environments Office
EV44, Marshall Space Flight Center

Office: (256) 544-9136
Fax: (256) 544-0242
William.J.Cooke at nasa.gov<mailto:William.J.Cooke at nasa.gov>

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