[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

(meteorobs) My first Leonid animations




>To: imo-news@yahoogroups.com, akm-mitglieder@egroups.com, leo2001@egroups.com
>Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 13:34:29 +0100 (MET)

Folks,

in 1999 I was somewhat disappointed by my video records of the Leonids storm.
I had choosen a small field of view with good limiting magnitude but recorded
just a few hundred Leonids. In fact, even during the storm Taurids and 
other meteors made up about 20% of all detected meteors.

So this year I decided for the opposite choice. I operated AVIS with a
16mm f/2.8 fish-eye lens which gave me a 95 deg field of view and a
limiting magnitude of close to 5 mag. It turned out that this was a good
choice, especially since the percentage of bright meteors was much higher
than in 1999. A first run of the meteor detection software MetRec revealed
more than 2000 meteors, among them a number of fireballs, in 8 hours of 
effective observing time. There are up to 20 recorded meteors per minute
which is about half of what I saw with my own eyes. Hence, the video gives
a good account of the visual impression of the storm.

The analysis will be refined in the following days, but to have already 
something picturesque I created a first animation of the 2001 Leonid
storm last night. It covers the time 17:00-21:00 UT on November 18. Each
of the 240 image of the sequence was made of 1500 video frames, i.e. 
one minute of recordings.

The animation is not yet perfect, but I guess it's a good start.

There are two versions available: 
 - half PAL resolution (388x284 pixel, 18 MB!!!)
  http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachendot de/Colleagues/molau/leo01/leo01an1.gif
 - quarter PAL resolution (192x144, pixel, 4.3 MB)
  http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachendot de/Colleagues/molau/leo01/leo01an2.gif

I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers,
Sirko Molau

 --
************************************************************************** 
*  Dipl.-Inform. Sirko Molau                  *                          *
*  RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl fuer Informatik VI  *              __          *
*  Ahornstr. 55, D-52056 Aachen, Germany      *       " 2B v 2B "        *
*                                             *                          * 
*  phone: +49-241-8021615                     *             Shakespeare  *
*  fax  : +49-241-8022219                     *                          *
*  email: molau@informatik.rwth-aachendot de     *                          *
**************************************************************************
*  www  : http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachendot de/Colleagues/molau       *
**************************************************************************


The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
If you are interested in complete links on the 2001 LEONIDS, see:
http://www.meteorobs.org/storms.html
To stop getting email from the 'meteorobs' list, use the Web form at:
http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html