August 2004 Observations

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August 2004:     09-19-2004     09-20-2004 - More video fields

2004 Perseids - the weather was awful for the peak.

Single video fields of an early Perseid shot with the Meteor Tracker. Imaged with a PC-164 High Res video camera and 35mm F/1.2 lens. FOV is approximately 8x6 degrees.

Aug 10,2004 04:25:14 UT Perseid Meteor - Another field. Going, going... - Integration of 7 video fields

August 11 Sporadic - Another field. Integration of a few video fields
739 Kb Slow-mo Animated GIF of tracked meteor


The images below offer a good view of how the Meteor Tracker tracks a meteor.

The August 11th 2004 sporadic lasted for several video frames and was heading nearly straight down with respect to the instrument's alignment. During detection and tracking, the mirrors are positioned to reflect the meteor's image into the high resolution camera. The system continues to monitor the meteor's location via a video feed from a wide field camera and after it passes a certain distance, the next mirror positioning command is issued. This process is repeated until the meteor is no longer brighter than detection and triggering threshhold levels. In the case of this meteor, the mirrors were repositioned three times after the original detection and positioning.

739 Kb Slow-mo Animated GIF of tracked meteor

Here are the four integrated segments as images:
First segment - Second segment - Third segment - Last segment

Integrated without slewing frames
Integrated with slewing frames
Integrated to show the entire path of the meteor


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