1 / 20

Five Years in the Building of the Saskatchewan Fireball Camera Network

Five Years in the Building of the Saskatchewan Fireball Camera Network. Gordon E. Sarty University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Canada. The network as it (almost) is today. The beginning: Oct. 30, 1993, Western Canada Fireball.

maisie
Download Presentation

Five Years in the Building of the Saskatchewan Fireball Camera Network

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Five Years in the Building of the Saskatchewan Fireball Camera Network Gordon E. Sarty University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Canada

  2. The network as it (almost) is today

  3. The beginning: Oct. 30, 1993, Western Canada Fireball • Lots and lots (70) visual observations collected by telephone by Richard Huziak. • I wrote some software to compute the flight-path and orbit of the fireball. [Huziak and Sarty, JRASC, 88, 332-351, 1994] • Wouldn’t it be great if I could to this automatically?

  4. The breakthrough: free stuff from Richard Spalding of SANDIA Labs • Parts arrived ca. 2005 • Assembled 2 fisheye cameras in my garage • Later (2008?) I got an older Sandia mirror camera from Rick – it is now in Winnipeg.

  5. The first detected meteor • Used a sentinel box • Had summer student Andy Salisbury tinker with the camera to get it working • Videos played with sdisplay • First video here Sept. 2, 2006 • Beginning of nearly continuous monitoring of the Saskatoon sky – interrupted twice by Physics Building renovations… • Nice but I wanted to get the data to my software so I could compute trajectories and orbits.

  6. Switch to Rob Weryk’s ASGARD, 2007 • Viking sky place • Or sci-fi aliens?

  7. The first computed orbit

  8. Saskatoon Detections: 2006 - 2009 • The camera of fireball02 = fireball04 but the computer/software running the camera is different • Based on work dome by Neil Johnson for an undergrad research project • fireball04 was moved to Lucky Lake in February 2009 • “Mainly clear” ~ 50% cloud cover, “Mostly cloudy” ` 90% cloud cover, “Clear” = no cloud cover. Based on Environmental Canada data • For fireball4, the fraction of sky visible was estimated from the hourly calibration frames • Net time is observing time weighted by fraction of sky visible • I trim false positives from the data every morning as I read my e-mail

  9. Photometric mass distribution • Not the final result! The masses are too small, there is an order of magnitude error in the absolute flux determination. • Corrections to the absolute value of the photometric mass needs to be done • Distribution shape is correct • Flux calibration done via the stars visible in representative calibration frames • Photometric mass x velocity2 x efficiency = integrated intensity

  10. Installation of the Lucky Lake camera: fireball04 • Installed February, 2009 on Tenho Tuomi’s roof • The most reliable camera on the network

  11. The Winnipeg camera: fireball1 • Met Larry Gundrum while searching for Buzzard Coulee meteroites • Installed, May, 2009 on Larry’s roof in Winnipeg • No coincident detections yet

  12. The Dauphin camera: fireball7 • An Impact Model 40396 video amp/splitter divides camera output between two computers • Fireball7 runs Asgard, the other computer runs Sonota UFO software • Splitters can allow us to add existing cameras to a network without interrupting their existing functionality • Hooked into Ron Lupack’s existing allsky camera on his roof • 1st event into io on January, 2011 • Ron sent me his old computer, I installed debian and Asgard • Getting the internet connection to all me to ssh in is always tricky

  13. The Yorkton camera: fireball6 • Operated by Jim Huziak (Rick’s brother) • Installed on a school roof • Connecting to internet failed – school IT person severely messed up the computer • Jim set the computer back to me – reinstall – maybe a new location?

  14. The Regina camera: fireball5 • Martin Beech above • His camera is identical to the Yorkton Camera – one of the three from Richard Spalding to Martin, ca. 2000? • Waiting for Campion College to hook up internet… (been waiting for over a year) • Currently on the old VCR system

  15. Buzzard Coulee detection! November 28, 2008 • From Saskatoon (fireball4 before it went to Lucky Lake)

  16. Picking up meteorites Winter 2008 Spring 2009 Fall 2010 Rick Tenho Ellen Milley A man out standing in his field.

  17. Fireballs in Dauphin but not Winnipeg July 11, 2011 January 19, 2011 July 14, 2011 April 6, 2011

  18. A recent event over B.C. – from Lucky Lake May 14, 2011

  19. A recent event in B.C. – from Cranbrook, B.C. Video from Rick Nowell, College of the Rockies, Cranbrook, BC May 14, 2011

  20. Let’s Network! Image from James Whitehead’s web site: http://www.allsky.ca/

More Related