(meteorobs) 1. Meteor observation 2. Odd light and synchronous radio capture

[Thomas Ashcraft]

On 8/24/11 4:10 AM, kim hay wrote:

Kim wrote:

Do you leave your setup running 24/7? Or only on observing events.
How big are the files, keep what sounds interesting, and delete the rest.
How and what do you have for your setup, in the way of the all sky
camera and recording events?

We have the all sky camera, but no audio at this point.  We are looking
into doing this setup.

Kim

Hi Kim,

I run radio observations 24/7 into a spectrograph but operate visual video from dusk to dawn.   I tried running visual video all day with a special infrared dome but never caught any daytime fireballs. I checked the daytime video at times of significant radio receptions but could never detect a visual meteor in the daytime sky.

I have a Sentinel camera that has a Sandia capture box that triggers on meteors.

I also split the video analog signal through a video distribution amp and feed a second stream through a Canopus ADVC55 analog to digital converter with stereo radio audio ( usually two separate radios for meteors)  and then into a Mac running iMovie 6. This makes continuous video/audio and one night's file size is about 120 GB.  I extract the significant meteors into individual movies and dump the night's large file for a fresh night's recording.

I have an older archive of various captures here:
http://www.heliotown.com/Ashcrafts_Fireball_Archive.html

The past year or so I only process more significant meteors but do not have them assembled anywhere. I am using my meteor array for lightning and transient luminous event studies these days as well as meteors.

Clear skies,
Thomas