PhotoGav

The vbs route is very simple. You will find a folder of standard vbs scripts in a folder here: C:ProgramData/SiTech/SiTechExe/VBSScripts (see screenshot). You just double click the script you want to run, e.g. LunarRate.vbs and it will change the parameter. A dialog box appears telling you what the current setting is and you just click OK. Don’t forget to run SiderealRate.vbs to put it back to sidereal rate when required!

Hope that sorts the issue out for you.

Exactly how are you setting the mount to Lunar Rate Tracking?

I have a Mesu 200 and to change the rate setting I have to run a vbs script. You don’t describe doing that anywhere. It very much sounds like you have not really set the mount to Lunar Rate...

I am currently live streaming the output of my GRAVES radio meteor detection system on YouTube and the Quadrantids meteor shower is very active! Have a look here:

Just now, ollypenrice said:

There are now five Mesus based at my place, three of them carrying complex multiple scope payloads, and all have been balanced simply by 'feel' as I guess you did yours. None of them shows the slightest sign of a problem. I wouldn't worry about it.

Olly

Thank you for this Olly. I wasn’t worrying about it until I watched this video and developed ‘balance envy’!! I will stop worrying again now.

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

That's a nice series of events you've captured there Gav. Putting the antenna outside has made all the difference. How high off the ground have you mounted it?

Ian

Thanks Ian, yes, the kit is glowing! The aerial is on a 3 metre mast. It is at an elevation angle of only about 10° as the ground is uneven. I will do a bit of gardening to drop the back foot of the tripod to raise the elevation of the aerial a few degrees. I have reduced the gain and upped the SNR threshold; the system is now registering proper meteor events only. I’m ready for the Quadrantids!

Could the intermittent line be occasional reflection off the ionosphere?

The continuing story:

I moved the aerial from the Warm Room to outside yesterday and the radio sky has exploded into life... and it was pretty busy before! I am finding that it is regularly detecting an almost continuous stream around events. Is this just lingering ionisation or might it be the direct GRAVES signal itself? I can't belief it is the direct signal as geography suggests that is not possible. My best interpretation is that the system is now massively more sensitive. I have reduced the Gain right down and altered the SNR threshold up slightly. I will see if that calms things down to just the more significant meteor events - though the first screenshot would suggest that that hasn't happened.

Here are a selection of screenshots, including what I can only imagine is a pass of multiple Starlink satellites:

Nice video, thanks for posting! That looks ultra easy with the ASA mount. I have a Mesu 200 and the software doesn’t have that balance feature. I have balanced as well as I could manually. Any ideas about a software solution for direct drive mounts other than the ASA?

Looking through my data, I have found some more probable ISS events.

This is a little earlier from the same 18-12-20, 12:40 pass:

And one from the 07:50 pass this morning:

And finally, a noisy one from the 13:27 pass yesterday 17-12-20:

The ISS 'ugly' orbit is obviously just in the right patch of sky right now, so no doubt more events to come.

@johnb - I think that I have just detected an ISS pass:

That is certainly the strongest satellite signal that I have seen so far and there was a pass today from my location as follows:

12:36:48 W 10˚  ->  12:40:04 SSW 47˚  ->  12:43:19 SE 10˚

Please let me know if it would be useful for your project and if so, how to go about adding observations.

Hi John, that is fascinating, well done for attempting the mapping project and for the excellent results so far. It seems that the meteors we detect with the GRAVES frequency here in the UK are generally occurring in the atmosphere above France somewhere, which are unlikely to be seen visually from southern England. Is that correct?

Very interesting to see what others are capturing. Here is my heat map for December so far:

And a few captures from last night:

The system has been very busy and continues to be so. It will be interesting to see at what point it starts to calm down.

It has been great to have a radio system in operation as the sky was pretty awful here last night. The Observatory where I work has a whole calendar of outreach events, including last night for the Geminids. Normally this would involve people meeting at the Dome to stand outside looking out for meteors. The event couldn't go ahead as normal this year due to Covid restrictions and would have been cancelled anyway due to the cloud, but thanks to the new system we were able to meet in a Zoom session, with over 30 participants enjoying the live feed from the radio meteor detector, watching the waterfall for pings and listening to the ssssshhssshhhhsssweeoooooshsshsssshhhsssweoossshhhssssweeeoooooshhhssssssss audio! 

3 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

cannot see images.

Hopefully you can seen an image on that post now.

Mike, I caught that one too, logged at 64.4 seconds!

@The Admiral, that’s great, thank you Ian. I’ve seen some of these documents, but not all. Plenty of research reading there. I agree, it’s not simple! 

Thank you @Geminids.

No, there is no trajectory info from the all sky camera, though the meteor in the image above was a Leonid, so moving from east to west. 

Thank you for that link, I will enjoy reading and learning, there’s lots of good stuff there.

I don’t know what the details are for the antenna I have - how would I find those things out?

@Tomatobro & @wxsatuser - thank you both. I think I will give ‘no elevation’ a go and see how it fares while I make a bespoke bracket. 

33 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

I put that question at the end of a talk by an expert  and was told no. The ones we detect are a long way off.  Something to do with the distance between us and the radar site and the reflection angle as I recall.

Interesting, thank you, but what a shame!

6 minutes ago, Geminids said:

Actually Gav, there are many of us with the same ambition of trying to understand  waterfall or spectrogram displays.  The links to video or still images is tenuous, not suprisingly as the direct light captured on camera is totally different to GRAVES scatter from ionisation trails.  Head echoes such as the one on your 01:15:01 spectrogram can tell us something, but with a lot of effort.  In the spectrogram following, the event looks like an underdense meteor.  The longer duration events may be the specualar trail or sometimes longer lasting ionisation drifting in upper atmosphere winds.

If you capture more ISS passes on your radio you may be interested in sharing them with this group here https://radiometeordetection.org/radioproject

Thank you, that is all interesting and helpful. Hopefully I might be able to contribute some useful data to the Radio Meteor Detection project in time, extending the contributor area in the south!

On another question, if I may - does the angle of elevation of the aerial matter that much? I have another thread asking about this, but thought I would seize you while I have you! Is it ok if the aerial is level rather than raised to my theoretical optimum of 17°?

Here’s a general question regarding the aerial: does the elevation angle of the aerial really matter? The theoretical elevation from my location is 17°, but if it is basically horizontal, will it make a significant difference? I am struggling to devise a good method of getting the 17° angle on the antenna when I am mounting the system outside on a big tripod and 3m mast. I bought an adjustable elevation bracket, but it is a bit flimsy and I don’t have the correct hardware to attach the aerial to it anyway! I’m wondering if I can not worry about this 17° angle for now and still get good data?

1 hour ago, Tomatobro said:

When I started I used some software called Bandicam. It was about $30 as I recall. I set it up to record the screen and audio in half hour periods. It has a delayed start feature that is useful for meteor recording.

Next day I would revue each AVI for recordings of interest. Fast forwarding I would look for signals then reverse and watch and listen to the event.

I could also take screen shots of interesting events.  With twenty in the class you could give them one half hour AVI each for analysis. Just a thought.

I like that idea very much, thank you! You might have seen that I have also started another thread about decoding the waterfall to understand what the reflections tell us about the meteors that caused them. Your thoughts would be most welcome!

14 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

The last image of the group has a satellite reflection.

Good stuff, thank you. I thought that was the case. It will be interesting to catch the ISS passing by one day!

14 hours ago, andrew s said:

If they drift left or right then that is due to the doppler shift as they move away or towards you.

Regards Andrew 

Ah, interesting, thank you. I thought that Doppler shift was correlated to frequency change, dropping in Hz as the meteor slows down in the atmosphere, hence the events with the ‘tails’ moving down the waterfall and the bright blob at the end. So much to learn!

As the title suggests, I would like to try and understand what the waterfall display of GRAVES reflections can tell me about the meteor that caused it. Or was it even a meteor...??!

Here are a number of event screen shots.

These are the 'normal' ones - what do the various shapes, durations and brightnesses say about the meteors?

And then some weirder ones:

I look forward to hearing how to identify the 'reflection zoo'!!

Finally, is it appropriate to correlate these two as being the same meteor?

Thanks,

Gav.

My next questions are going to be all about what the waterfall display tells us... pictures and questions to follow soon!

On 28/11/2020 at 19:30, wxsatuser said:

You could try GB3VHF on 144.430MHz, it's in Kent near Wrotham and one beam is aimed 288degs.
I would think it should be audible near you if you have reasonable site.

It is GPS locked so should be very stable and bang on frequency.
Tune USB to 144.429MHz and you can adjust the carrier to that frequency.
As well as a carrier/morse you may hear some JT65B signals.
Morse starts every odd minute past the hour for 13seconds and JT65B every even minute past the hour for 48secs.

Mike, thank you so much for this suggestion. I attempted to tune to the GB3VHF signal today and it appeared straight away, loud and clear! I tweaked the ppm setting to bring it to the 144.430MHz indicator in SDR# and the GRAVES pings are now appearing at 2000 Hz when the dongle is tuned to 143.048MHz. Here's a screen shot:

Next step is to get the aerial installed permanently outside, just waiting for an altitude adjustable mast bracket, which is arriving tomorrow. I should then be ready for the Geminids!

Thank you for your help.

Gav.