Showing posts with label Brough Astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brough Astronomy. Show all posts

Sunday, 17 September 2023

Meteor activity for July / August 2023

Below is a carpet plot produced in Microsoft Excel that shows the hourly meteor counts recorded during July / August 2023 from the Raspberry Pi 3-based receiver at Brough Astronomy's Observatory (BLAS).  These were post-processed on my development system at home.  This shows the "overdense" meteor reflections received from the GRAVES radar in France and probably correspond with those that were probably visible with the naked eye, albeit over the Mediterranean! 


During July and August there is a procession of meteor showers, as predicted by the tables published in "The Radio Sky" Lashley.

I'm looking at setting up a second receiver and computer to decode amateur radio meteor scatter activity using MSK-144 for the next meteor shower and have installed WSJT-X on my desktop Raspberry Pi that I'm using to develop my radio telescope.


Friday, 17 December 2021

Radar Meteor Observations

The meteor radar detection system at Brough Astronomy is based on a Raspberry Pi and low cost USB Software-Defined Radio dongle.  Despite it's small size, it is able to receive signals and distinguish between meteor echoes and the erroneous signals from satellites such as Elon Musk's "Starlink" constellation.

Over-dense echoes, caused by meteors with a mass that is greater than 1 mg, result in an ionised trail that persists over several seconds and occur in a daily peak associated with the earth passing through the meteor stream. 



Whilst the rapidly decaying under-dense echoes, caused by the background of meteors with a mass less that 1 mg, appear to follow a sinusoidal pattern that is caused by the Earth's rotation into the meteor stream.


These graphs explains why meteor showers are best observed in the early morning before sunrise when the population is greatest - for more information see the presentation that was given to group's monthly meeting