2022

Before too long I’ll post some more detail here about another project I’ve been working on for a year or so now, specifically providing data to the UK Meteor Network. Essentially you can install a camera connected to a Raspberry Pi running software that allows for the constant monitoring of an area of the night sky, with a view to capturing images of meteors. The data is then processed centrally to establish the exact location / trajectory of each meteor detected.  The UK Meteor Network website can be found here.

As an example, last night one of my cameras captured a particularly bright meteor, you can see the image below.

For the astronomers out there, you can make out the asterism of the Plough (sort of stood on its end) to the right of the image. Polaris (the North or Pole Star) can be seen towards the top centre of frame. The view from this particular camera is essentially to the north.

This data was fed to the UKMON network, and along with data from other cameras, the details of the meteor was calculated and can now be viewed on the UK Meteor Network archive for the event here. The meteor was part of the sigma Hydrids and passed over the south west corner of the Lake District reaching an absolute magnitude of -4.1.

It’s great to see people sharing data with the common goal of advancing Citizen Science!

All I do is run a couple of cameras using software provided by the UK Meteor Network. I also make a small donation to support the necessary network infrastructure they need to run the network. Their license is shown below for reference.

© UK Meteor Observation Network 2021 . This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. 
>Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.