Located on Highway 97 in the British Columbia Cariboo-Chilcotin area, Mile 108 Elementary School is the site of the second AllSky camera located in School District #27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin). This camera will provide overlapping coverage with cameras in Prince George, Tatla Lake, Kelowna, Penticton, and Osoyoos, thereby increasing the likelihood of a multiple site common capture.
Mile 108 Observatory is located at the Mile 108 Elementary School on Highway 97, southwest of the 108 Resort airstrip.
The Mile 108 AllSky camera system is installed on the roof of the school. The following image is the latest capture. North is up, West is to the right.
meteor detection on UT 2010 Sept.11
11h 30m 04s
All time UT:
20100910 040224 SE quadrant going SE very short and swift -1.5 mag
20100910 110434 NE quad going SE short -2.4 mag
—
20100910 113240 NW quadrant going West long – good for analysis with Ken and Ajai 0.0 mag
Beginning Az: 276 el: 54 Ending Az: 278 el: 42
Beginning RA: 353 Dec: 41 Ending Ra: 338 Dec: 35
ua2_fdata2 fno=” 64″ b=”255″ bm=”035″ Lsum=”100988.4″ mag=”-8.24″ az=” 224.5928461″ ev=” 19.3637454″ ra=” 0.7249902″ dec=” -7.5120931″
20100909_12257 – N —->N very bright
_114852 – N at horizon very right
_102352 – NE point source
Note: The 114852 Fireball was also captured in Prince George. Data loaded to the Video Data Download – Common Capture folder.
Courtenay EMO detections:
v20100908_123740 – East sector bright terminal flare
_111002 – West sector
_104157 – SW
_095125 – NW near horizon
_093102 – NNE short
_041130 – S short
For forward scatter observers the SNOTEL Meteor burst system can be a viable substitute of RF when the Canadian analog TV stations are phased out. Currently this phaseout is scheduled for sometime in 2011. The US stations have already made the jump form analog to digital.
SNOTEL, is an acronym for Snowpack Telemetry. It began operation in the 1970’s and is run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). For complete description of the system visit the general information page at the home site at:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/factpub/sntlfct1.html
A quick search of the net will also bring up many hits on this system.
For our purpose we are not interested with the remote slave stations, rather we want to listen for the RF reflected from meteors from the two master stations transmitters. The stations are located near Boise, Idaho and Ogden, Utah and operate on a frequency of 40.530 MHz and run at a power of about 1,500 watts. Two types of encoding are used, a 90 degree FSK for the first ~ 10 seconds of each minute then a 30 degrees FSK for the rest of the minute.
Listen to SNOTEL signal recorded from West Kelowna during intense Es on 2009-06-23 1648 UT. During none sporadic periods expect to hear only brief pings from under dense echoes. Both SNOTEL stations put in strong echoes in southern British Columbia.
More details to come.
All times UT
20100905 061055 NE quad going SE -2 mag
20100905 080720 SW quad going S -3 mag
20100905 080746 NE&NW quad going NW -1.7 mag long trail
20100905 093915 NE quad going N -2.6 mag
20100905 094200 SW quad going SW -2.2 mag
20100905 120316 NE quad going NNE mag unknown (Sentinel III) All others UFOC2
The RA and Dec and Az/El for all the events but last are available.
DAO
Dave Balam will be editing this page soon. In the mean time he sent some images representing the current all-sky time lapse camera at the DAO. A Sentinel unit will be added once Sid is available to install it.
Dave does have some images that show the capabilities of their current all-sky camera. The camera is on line an updated every minute at:
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/facilities/hia/astrophysical-observatory/skycam.html
A mosaic_2009_10_24 – an 8 hour stretch (1 hour per individual stack) of the sky on 2009 Oct. 24/25. The objects marked with blue boxes are meteor trails.
Image: meteor_100217 – a meteor trail seen through the clouds before dawn on 2010 Feb 17.
Image: meteor_2009_10_25_01_24_13 – a bright meteor trail from 2009 Oct. 25
More to come in the weeks to follow.
