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Re: (meteorobs) Video Observing
Hello Bob,
> of meteors. You can count me in this group but like some others I cannot
> simply go out and spend $1000+ on an image intensifier and a super 8mm
> video camera. I also have some reservations about spending a great deal
> of time in front of a television waiting for streaks to appear.
I completely aggree with your point of view! Everybody should check very
critical whether he is really willing to spend the money and time. It
simply makes no sense, if everybody plays with nice video eqiupment and
nobody really observes anymore outside...
> I
> understand there is software to reduce data from video recordings but is
> it widely available and compatible with home PC's?
The answer is: yes and no.
For the automatic search of video tapes, so far only one test program
exists (described in the last WGN). There are at least two more programmers
who work at the same problem (Pete Gural, Chris Trayner), but who will
probably need some more time (?).
I hope, that my meteor search program will be ready in 1997. You will
need a fast PC (clockrate >66 MHz) and a PCI frame grabber card (the type
is still to be decided) to run the program. The software itself will be in
the public domain.
For the meteor measurement (position), there exists the AstroRecord
program of Marc de Lignie (Holland). This program reads AVI files, and it
is also in the public domain.
For AstroRecord you need a fast PC running MS Windows and a frame grabber
card, that produces AVI files.
Sirko
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