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Re: (meteorobs) Perseid Meteors with HandyCam

YoungBob wrote:
>      This is a very interesting list, glad I signed on.  Is your Watec video 
> cam a normal consumer type of camera or a little surveillance type.  The 
> reason I ask is that I have a little Topica surveillance camera which I use 
> for occultations and also with telescopes.  I am set up to observe in the 
> field, within extension cord distance from my car, feeding from the 
> camera/scope to a VCR and using a 10" b&w TV as a monitor.  The camera has 
> audio and a S-W radio puts WWV time signals over the tape.  Works great.  I 
> can get 11 mag stars on a 12" newtonian.  Then, using a frame grabber, I pull 
> stills from the video tapes onto the computer, where I can enhance and diddle 
> with the pictures using Photoshop.
> 
>      I have a "baby moon" hubcap (remember them, on VWs?), about 12" in 
> diameter upon which I have put 30 coats of Turtle wax.  Placed on the ground 
> under and a little bit to one side of a camera tripod, I can get nice all-sky 
> pixs using a 35-mm camera and 50 mm lens (because the hubcap is a mirror the 
> f number is the same as the fast 50 - f1.4, not slower as with even the bast 
> wide-angle lenses).
> 
>      Now to my question, has anybody used a security camera like this?  

Depends what you mean by "like this".  Hubcabs have been used many times in
all-sky fireball cameras.  My recollection is that most have the camera
at the top of a framework, so the camera occults around the zenith.
Having a fixed setup means that the geometric distortions are constant,
and being collimated simplifies the transformation from x-y measured
on your film to altitude and azimuth on the sky.

Security cameras have been incorporated into low-light television
systems to detect meteors.  Of course, these days the B&W security
cameras are CCD-based and much smaller than the old style Vidicons.
They are a fraction of the price of a Camcorder, but you do need
a separate VCR.

Have you recorded any meteors with the video system operating on your
Newtonian?  Its f/ratio is probably too slow to detect many.

Malcolm

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