User manual SBIG ALL SKY METEOR CAMERA METEOR DETECTOR

[. . . ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ALL SKY CAMERA CLOUD SENSOR and METEOR DETECTOR SBIG has developed a new camera system designed to watch the skies all night and log any images with moving objects in them. This new version of our all sky camera sacrifices some field of view for sensitivity, and as a result can detect satellites down to 4th magnitude, and several meteors a night during non-meteor shower periods. The field of view is still a very respectable 90 x 140 degrees. [. . . ] The software uses a Hough transform to find linear features, plus other tests. Each image with something in it is saved for later A meteor trail is seen as a streak near the inspection. A filter is available to milky way in the center of the frame. Very cut down on false alarms due to faint clouds are also detected on the left. plane traffic, if you live near an airport. The software also allows the images to be easily viewed later to eliminate false alarms. Compared to our previous All Sky camera, this camera does not cover the entire sky, however, with the previous allsky camera covering a full hemisphere often meant users would have a streetlight or window in the field of view, which corrupted the image annoyingly. Also, this data is intended to be useful for triangulating the height of the meteor, which is difficult near the horizon. The system works surprising well when the moon is full, with little loss of sensitivity. It is sensitive to linear clouds on such nights, such as cirrus or contrails. A side use of this system is therefore watching for high clouds at night. The unit can definitely allow one to see if clouds are present overhead at night when they are not visually detectable. The detection is easier if you live in an area with modest light pollution since it lights the clouds up. If your main interest is in detecting faint clouds overhead we can ship the camera with a clear window. The picture below shows an image taken with the camera of some clouds at night illuminated by light pollution. [. . . ] Two Meteor Cameras being operated 7 km (4. 36 miles) apart captured the same Cosmos 1437 Booster. Based on the separation of the observing sites, the Booster's position against the background stars appears to shift (parallax). By triangulation, it was determined that the Booster was approximately 150 miles away at the time. Meteor Cam 1 Meteor Cam 2 < < Separation Between Cameras Approximately 7 km >> [. . . ]