(meteorobs) Cloudbait camera project???

[Chris Peterson]

There is no conventional video camera more sensitive to meteors than the 
PC164C. There are similar cameras, made by Mintron, Watec and others 
that have essentially the same sensitivity. All these cameras use the 
Sony HAD class sensors, with their amplifiers tuned for maximum gain. In 
principle the 1/2" sensors should be slightly more sensitive than the 
1/3" sensors, but in practice I have not been able to see any 
difference. All the high sensitivity Sony sensor cameras I've tried 
catch the same meteors.

I'm not familiar with the Moonglow camera, but looking at their site it 
seems that this is an integrating video camera. That's great for stars 
and aurora, but not a good choice for meteors. In that application, it 
will have considerably lower sensitivity than a PC164C or similar, and 
will not provide useful velocity or timing information.

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 9/30/2011 3:14 PM, Jim Wooddell wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I am seeking information on the quality of the low light video of the PC164C
> camera that is in use in the Cloudbait Skycam Project.  I am in the middle
> of building one of these and was told about the Moonglow camera, which got
> in the way of my building this Cloudbait camera.  I think Chris has spent
> some time on this nice project and would like to hear from others that have
> used this camera.
> Does anyone have any real time video from a PC-164C camera of a meteor that
> they can share with me so that I have a really go idea what to expect from
> this camera.  I am not looking for still captures, I am looking for video
> from a real time, twilight or darker view.
>
> I have the  CPU horsepower storage space dedicated to this project so
> recording real time video is not an issue.  My plan is to not capture
> frames, but rather record the entire event and then use my software to slice
> the video where I need to I already have the NTSC digitizer that works fine
> on any NTSC video signal.
>
> Thank you for any input.
>
>
> Best!
>
> Jim Wooddell