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Re: (meteorobs) Re: WGN video paper



Hello Malcolm,
thanks for your comments on the paper. I think they have shown
impressively, what a video commission within IMO could do for
interested observers. It is the worst think if, say, three teams want to
do video observations and invest a lot of time and money, but only one of
those finally succeeds, whereas the other two give up completely
frustrated. 
When we started video observation in Berlin in summer '92, we
knew almost nothing about others having done the same thing before. We had
to invent everything from the very beginning, which was certainly not the
most effective way. It was not before the IMC '93 in Puimichel that I
started to realized what others had done in this field before. In '94 I
could establish first private contacts to other video observers, I met
Marc de Lignie at the IMC in Bulgaria. From that time on I learnt, how
good cooperation is, how much work and time it can save.
Just to give an example on how this cooperation can look like: One of the
problems that have to be solved when doing video observations is to
record the time. Last spring we found out, that lunar occultation observers 
in the IOTA came across the same problem five years earlier. They decided
to build an electronic time inserter, which is certainly the best
solution. We could establish private contacts to them, and they even
modified the electronic design for us. Now this solution is
not only available for German meteor observers, but essentially for 
everybody (even though the time signal support is currently restricted to
central Europe). Marc de Lignie and Felix Bettonvil from the Netherlands
and the team from Petnica Science Center (Yogoslavia), where we will have
our next IMC, also own such an inserter.

> Commission. That's been my opinion for some years.  The Commision
> would collate information about lenses, image intensifiers, frame
> grabbers, CCDs, time-tagging, construction, software, tips on getting
> the kit through customs etc., and hence enable new video observers to
> get operational systems at affordable cost in a reasonable time.  It
> can also co-ordinate observing campaigns for such things as
> double-station observations, video-telescopic comparisons to determine
> the errors and speed scale of the latter.  It would be a vehicle for
> communicating ideas and setting up standards.  It could offer advice
> about techniques, e.g. should you track with the sky or leave the
> camera fixed in altitude and azimuth. 

Right, that's what a Commission should do. From the complexity of
the job it is clear that such a commission is not a 'one-man-institution'.
Somebody has to organize the stuff, has to be a contact person and
keep contacts to all the observers around the world, but that person does
not has to find all the solutions alone. 

> Are you volunteering Sirko?

It would be a great pleasure for me to become the head of a video
commission within IMO. However, I have not made up my mind yet. In these 
days I'm leaving university. I will find a job in the next months. If
everything is arranged then and I feel that I have the time needed for
such a position, I will volunteer for it at the next IMC.
It would make no sense to me to say now 'yes, I will do the job' and find 
out in five months, that I'm not able to do it *good*. 

> Re. recording of spectra, I know that you were trying to cut down on
> references, but I think the outstanding work of Henry Soper should get
> a mention.

To be honest, so far I have not heard from him. Could you give me a
complete reference, please.

> We may not be able to produce a fully automatic system straightaway
> because the processing power is not yet available, so in the first
> instance I'd like a semi-automatic system that locates the meteors.
> You then just have to transfer the frames that span the meteor event
> for analysis.

I perfectly agree with you.

> On the processing power front, Geoff Grayer was keen to do some
> pre-processing like averaging and differencing frames in hardware, and
> perhaps if an algorithm is devised for automatic detection, this too
> might be done in bespoke hardware.  As he's produced similar equipment
> for experiments at CERN, he could well be right.  I'm only a software
> man!

*That* would be really great! I only can ask you to support him as good 
as possible and give him the right motivation, if he really wants to
become active in that direction. Some time ago, when I was in the middle
of my studies, I also thought about the possibility of a cheap meteor
detection *hardware*.
The algorithms I use, for example, are essentially simple array
operations. For somebody who works in that field it should be relatively
easy to implement them in hardware, using ASICs for example. That solution
would be not too expensive (I guess well below $1000) but probably
extremely fast.
However, in this respect I only have ideas, too. I never had the time
nor the chance to check it out myself. If there is somebody out
there who wants to give it a try, it would just be wonderful! 

> Yes this is most desirable.  In the 1970s in the UK there was a
> fireball network, where fish-eye cameras monitored the sky each clear
> night.  Even armchair astronomers were enthusiastic participants as
> they didn't have to sit out in the cold.  The telescope makers joined
> in as they built automatic systems that would detect if the sky was
> clear, begin observing, close down at a certain time or when it
> clouded over.  Video does offer scope to those who like their creature
> comforts, and might attract these types again.  So perhaps when we
> have our act together, we should publicise it widely, and not just in
> the meteor community.

Right. A group is always composed best, if you have not only experts for
some special areas, but different people with different intentions and
background. If we can attract those 'armchair astronomers' we may gain a
lot of help. I remember a talk given by Peter Wright (he is a radio meteor
observer living in Germany) about a system he built for automatic meteor
photography. That also involved rain detectors and similar stuff. I guess
he would be the right contact for everybody who wants to design a fully
autonomous video system.
Sirko

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*           Sirko Molau             *                    __              *  
*          Str.246 Nr.16            *             " 2B v 2B "            * 
*          D-13086 Berlin           *                                    * 
*   smo@informatik.tu-chemnitzdot de   *                       Shakespeare  *
*   http://www.tu-chemnitzdot de/~smo  *                                    *
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