Meteors
What is a meteor?
Birmingham Astronomical Society and its members have always been interested in observing Meteors, Its only to be expected that while observing the night sky we will observe that mysterious streak of light, sometimes called a shooting star.
Before we talk of our project group within BAS. We need to understand what a meteor is,
Subject to certain conditions a Meteoroid becomes a Meteor becomes a Meteorite they are the same physical item just in, for a better definition different stages (states).
Meteoroid A body travelling in the solar system (under 1 meter in size) that would become a Meteor if it enters the Earths Atmosphere. Meteors are the streak of incandescent light given off as the body becomes superheated, many meteors dont survive this super heated phase, burning up on entry. If it survives and a remnant reaches the Earths surfac it becpmes a Meteorite.
Birmingham Astronomical Society formed a project group, wishing to support the Meteor Community in its scientific studies of the Meteor phenomena in all its stages. We have evolved our interests from the mere observation of Meteors during phases if increased Meteor activity during Meteor Showers to extend that interest in providing better Meteor observing, recording events and gather data and information for the scientific community.
Meteorites that fall to Earth represent some of the original, diverse materials that formed planets billions of years ago. By studying meteorites we can learn more about our solar system’s history. This includes learning the age and composition of different planetary building blocks, the temperatures achieved at the surfaces and interiors of asteroids, and the degree to which materials were shocked by impacts in the past.
Many areas of research exist and Citizen science is a vital source of information. From people reporting visual observations to groups like the International Meteor Organisation and similar.
BAS started with one then two video cameras at its club room in the center of Birmingham. They recorded videos of Meteors detected and with special software data gathered. Identifying Allsky7 Fireball Network meteor data and information. like :-
Date / Time /Duration /Intensity / Start AZ / Start EL /End AZ / End EL / Angular Velocity / Angular separation and more. This enabled identification of the meteors radiant point, its classification, very clever calculations estimate mass of the body, its likelihood of reaching earth, if so its potential locations etc etc, This was very labour intensive, each nights dat had to be reviewed, false detections eliminated and data manually shared.
Due to technological advancements the cameras used became obsolete, being replaced by multicamera systems that self checked and eliminated erroneous data, bundled valid data and sent it all daily to a central data repository, further processing collated and linked data from camera systems around the globe in near real time as practicable. BAS chose the AllSky7 camera system and our data is shared initially to the Allsky7 Fireball Network Europe and beyond.