IMO Video Meteor Network Homepage

Contents

• The IMO Video Meteor Network
• Monthly Reports of the Video Network
• The Video Meteor Database
• Analysis Results
• Common Errors
• IMONET Mailing List
• IMONET Screen Saver

• MetRec Homepage

In March 1999, a video camera network was established by the German Arbeitskreis Meteore (AKM). Because of its international character, it has been renamed to IMO Video Meteor Network in 2004.

By December 2008, the network has grown to 26 cameras in Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands and the USA that provide regular video observations each month. Another 6 cameras in Slovenia, Italy, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic supply additional data in selected nights. All cameras work fully automated with the MetRec software.

A detailed description of the network was given in

S. Molau: "The AKM Video Meteor Network", In: B. Warmbein (ed.), Proc. Meteoroids 2001 Conference, pp. 315-318, Kiruna, Sweden, Aug. 2001.

The data collected by the IMO network is available without restriction to everybody who is investigating meteor showers. All we require is to reference the database properly in every work or publication using our data.

If you wish to join the network or have any question with respect to the database, please, contact the author.

The IMO Video Meteor Network as of December 2009. Full circles mark the position of cameras that are operated on a regular basis (Berlin, Brannenburg, Herne, Herford, Ketzür, Niederkrüchten, Seysdorf - all Germany; Kamnik, Konstanjevec, Ljubljana, Sredisce ob Dravi - all Slovenia; Albiano, Genova, Monte Baldo, Scorze, Valbrevenna- all Italy; Kuusankoski - Finland; Tomar - Portugal; Oostkapelle, Noordwijkerhout - Netherlands; Budapest, Hodmezovasarhely - Hungary; Las Palmas - Spain / not shown; Chula Vista, Tucson - USA / not shown). Open circles denote observing sites which occasionally provide additional video observations (Venezia - Italy; Ondrejov, Kunzak - all Czech Republic).

A detailed view of the area covered by the IMO Video Meteor Network can be obtained with Google Earth. A KML-File from the network can be imported to show the area covered by the individual cameras at an altitude of 100 km. The following two screen shots show all cameras in central Europe, in America and a particular pair of cameras in south Germany. By analysing the geometry of individual cameras it is possible to adjust the camera fields for double station recordings.

The area over central Europe covered by the cameras of the IMO Network at December 2009

The area over southern Europe covered by the cameras of the IMO Network at December 2009

The area over North America covered by the cameras of the IMO Network at December 2009

Detailed view of the fields of view of Mincam1 (Seysdorf) and AKM2 (Brannenburg).

Each month, a report with statistics of recent observations and preliminary analysis results is published.

The video meteor database obtained from the IMO video network contains for each meteor

• the appearance date and time (*)
• equatorial coordinates of the start and end point of the mean meteor trail (*)
• the apparent meteor velocity and an brightness estimate (*)
• the shower membership according to IMO's working list (*)
• position and brightness data from each individual video frame
• a sum image and a short animation of the meteor

All data marked with an asterisk (*) are available online in IMO's PosDat format.

All additional data as well as the configuration and logfiles of each observation are stored in an MetRec-internal format. The complete database of >30 GB is stored on a set of DVD-ROMs and can be obtained at cost from the author.

The video meteor database has been utilized for the analysis of individual meteor showers (e.g. the Taurids) and the update of the whole IMO Working List of Meteor Showers in 2006. In order to demonstrate and unveil the full value of the database, MetRec was supplemented by two new tools: RadFind and StrmFind.

Using these tools, a first automatic meteor shower search based on nearly 200,000 single station meteor records was carried out in 2005/2006. The results were presented at the 2006 IMC in Roden/NL. Not only 24 showers of the current IMO Working List were detected, but also 4 sporadic sources as well as a number of unknown meteor showers and shower candidates that are not yet part of the list.

In 2008, the analysis was repeated with an improved algorithm and a dataset that had almost doubled with 360,000 single station meteors. It was presented at the 2008 IMC in Sachtica, Slovakia. In the first step, the active radiants at each solar longitude were recomputed, and from these the list of meteor showers was created using the same algorithm as in 2006.

For the 10th anniversary of the IMO Video Meteor Network in 2009, the so far most comprehensive analysis based on 450,000 meteors has been carried out and published in WGN. In addition to the automated analysis, the result were manually refined this time. More than 50 meteor showers from the IAU Meteor Data Center (MDC) Working List were confirmed, and 12 new showers were detected. For each shower, we presented detailed parameters including activity profiles, and we presented findings about a velocity drift of certain long-lasting showers. As an example, the two following radiant plots are presented. They compare very well with similar plots of the SonotaCo network.

Plot of individual radiants over all solar longitudes in right ascension (x) and declination (y). Each dot represent a radiant made of between 10 and 10,000 meteors. The velocity is color coded, and the strength of the radiant (meteor number) by the intensity

The same plot as above, but projected with the difference between ecliptical and solar longitude (x) versus the ecliptical latitude (y) of the radiant.

There are a number of errors that typically occur in every day operation of a video system. The common errors page has a number of answers to those questions that you always liked to asked but never dared to. ;-)

Among the hundreds of thousand video meteors recorded by members of the IMO network, there are some unusual, fascinating and spectacular samples. A selection of these was used to create a screen saver (30 MB ZIP file), which comes in two version: with sound and without sound