(meteorobs) Capturing daytime fireballs?

[Chris Peterson]

I don't see how NIR filtering would provide an advantage. Most of the 
optical energy produced by meteors is at shorter wavelengths, and the 
sky continuum is only a little lower in the NIR than elsewhere. So 
you're going to throw away a lot of signal, and only slightly reduce the 
noise.

My first approach to a daytime survey camera would be to look at 
extending dynamic range. Most video cameras have shallow wells and/or 
poor processing designs. They offer 8-10 bits of output, and their 
realistic dynamic range is often much lower. A camera with a good sensor 
and circuitry designed to take advantage of it could give you 70dB or 
more of S/N, which would really assist in pulling out meteors only a 
little above the sky background.

If you want to explore filtering, I'd consider narrowband filters 
isolating specific emission lines which are common in meteor spectra- 
something from Mg, Na, or O, perhaps. You still have the problem of 
rejecting most of your energy, but you essentially remove the background 
completely, so with a sensitive camera you might see an improvement over 
unfiltered results. This would be something interesting to experiment with.

Chris

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

On 11/13/2015 7:00 AM, Thomas Ashcraft wrote:
> Are there any specialized camera systems for capturing daytime meteors
> and/or re-entries?
>
> Would near infrared filtering enhance chances of video capturing a
> daytime fireball?
>
> Links to papers?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Thomas