(meteorobs) Large fireball over Arizona Dec 11 2013 - video from near Santa Fe

[Jodie Reynolds]

Hello Jim,

Let me first take the opportunity to ask other camera owners a favor:

Please go toss a black plastic trash bag or a blanket or something
over your camera some evening and record thirty seconds or so of
nothing but that black cover.  This creates dark frames, and allows
us to stack your video to acquire more reference objects while
simultaneously allowing us to subtract the hot and dead pixels (some
of these cameras have a lot).  My cameras, with the exception of the
Sandia Sentinel camera, are pixel mapped in the camera - subtraction
happens before it even reaches a recorder.

Bonus points for recording a minute of video a few times over a few
separate nights with no events and no moon, then storing them with
precise time and date.  These allow us to stack the frames and build
a known calibration profile.

In Thomas' example:
East/West are mirrored, and the distortion of the
lens isn't too bad, although down in that corner like that you're
never going to get _that_ close for such a short event.  The moon is
a little lower than I'd expect suggesting some stretching out at the
edges that would need to be corrected.  Without another camera that
can see the event through the region of critical focus, I doubt
anyone would make it very far though.



Here's his sky with grid marking, close enough for the data that's
there:

http://www.spaceballoon.org/20131211_021057AZ8361_Ashcraft-Sky.png


--- Jodie

Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 11:57:23 AM, you wrote:

> Hello Thomas,

> Can you please provide a calibrated Azimuth and Elevation for the 
> Beginning and End of this event, please?

> Thanks!

> Jim Wooddell


> On 12/11/2013 8:43 AM, Thomas Ashcraft wrote:
>> Dec 11 2013
>>
>> My all-sky camera caught the large fireball over southern Arizona at 
>> 02:10:57 UT.  The fireball was over 350 miles from my observatory.
>>
>> Not sure if there might be any useful data since it is miniscule at 
>> the edge of my field of view.
>>
>> In the video the meteor appears at lower screen right passing near the 
>> bright dot which is Venus. NOTE:  The Moon is at low screen center, 
>> *not* to be confused with the fireball please.
>>
>> http://www.heliotown.com/FBns20131211_021057ARIZ8361_Ashcraft.mp4
>>
>> Thomas Ashcraft  -  Heliotown  -  New Mexico

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-- 
Best regards,
 Jodie                            mailto:spacerocks at spaceballoon.org