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Re: (meteorobs) Video camera meteor recording.
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Crawford <chriscrawford@wavedot net>
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) Video camera meteor recording.
> Ed, do your cautions apply to the new generation of surveillance cameras
> relying on the Sony ExView HAD CCDs? These things are claimed to have
> sensitivities of 0.0003 lux at f/1.8. One of the vendors listed in a
> previous posting to this list had a QuickTime movie 50 seconds long
showing
> 9 Leonids -- and the view was partially blocked by trees. Field of view
> looked like about 40 degrees, and I could see 5th magnitude stars. It's
hard
> to evaluate the true quality, because the file on the website was MPEG
> compressed, which really screws up meteor images.
>
> Chris
>
Chris:
I am not familiar with the Sony camera you mention. It may be worth
testing if you can get your hands on one. I had Sandia test a camera with
ultra low lux specs in order to see if it would record background stars with
our all-sky cameras. The camera was indeed very sensitive, recording
buildings etc around the horizon very nicely but background stars were lost
in the noise of the camera. Many of these cameras are as expensive as
surplus image intensifiers so cost reduction is not as apparent as one would
think. You say this camera will record 5th magnitude stars. A meteor is a
rapidly moving object so I rather doubt that it will record meteors this
faint. All I am stating, is proceed with caution. Try and loan a camera
for testing if possible. If it does work, the meteor community would be
interested in hearing about it.
Ed
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