New to Meteor Detecting

[jarraman]

is this a one as well

[SteveNickolls]

Hi, This is excellent news Ken :-) Well done, the second trace is particularly long, I bet you are very pleased.

Best regards,

Steve

[The Admiral]

is this a one as well2015-11-18.png

Well done Ken, excellent news! This certainly is one. I've noticed that the Leonid shower doesn't seem to be producing as many long duration events as I've seen with other showers.

What time was this event? I'll have a look and see what I've picked up. Interesting, though, the two events you've shown here seem to be at quite different frequencies, unless you've changed the dongle frequency in between the two.

Ian

[jarraman]

hi steve and ian,

yes im very pleased,but could not have done it without the help of the two of you.Steve just noticed it my self as far as i can rememmber it was the same frequency,,if i did change it it would be between 048 and 049.

the times where,08-41,ish and 11-21,both on the 18th.

but as luck would have it,nothing last night.soooooo my next question is.Is there a script just to capture the screen when a meteor shows up,save looking through the file the next morning,but then again,that would take the excitement out of it,,lol.

thanks again guys,

ken.

[The Admiral]

Hi Ken, I've got nothing like your long trace at that time, which is surprising as I would have expected to record that. I'm certain it is a meteor though. Just to confirm, is your computer clock more or less the correct time?

I'm also intrigued by you saying that there was nothing last night, because we are in the tail end of the Leonids and I've been getting tens per hour! Which begs the question what ambient noise levels you are getting. Perhaps the easiest way to give us a clue is to post a screen-shot of your SL please, to include the bar on the LHS.

I am not familiar with the script you are running, but I'd have thought it was recording only meteor strikes, but perhaps there is a setting you can adjust. Steve?

Ian

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

If you are using the MetScat_starter_v1.USR you can take a manual screenshot anytime by clicking on the "Capture now" button on the bar to the  LHS of the screen. Otherwise the system automatically takes a screenshot and saves it for you to look over at any later time. The script you are using is a basic one to get you up and running and detecting and recording 'hits' but from memory won't include the frequency of the trail etc. Hope this clarifies things. Strange why you didn't get any detections over night/early morning.

Can you do as Ian suggests and put a copy of your screen so we can have a look at it?

Cheers,

Steve

[jarraman]

hi guys,i did get some hits last night(early morning),had about 5,i think this is down to the set up.here is one from this morning.

[jarraman]

oops forgot,,screen shot.

[The Admiral]

Ah, I can read the figures on the bottom left of that screen shot. It looks as though your noise level is about -87dB, which isn't too bad, but you should be getting more events than you are I think.

Welcome to the world of meteor spotting :-)

Ian

[The Admiral]

Ah, you added another post whilst I was writing. Thanks Ken. That just confirms the noise level.

Ian

[jarraman]

hi ian.

altogether got about 6 hits,but like i said and i think you said also,,this is the start up script and i think it takes a shot about every 15 mins.but I'm happy.still a lot to learn.

do you leave yours running day and night?

[The Admiral]

Ah, well in that case, I'm not surprised you've not got many hits. You need to progress to a script which detects a meteor and takes a screen shot whenever user settable criteria are met. I can't help you with that one I'm afraid as I'm not familiar with the available scripts.

Folk do different things. Some leave their systems on 24/7, particularly if they want to provide reports to RMOB. Personally, I'm not keen to do that, but I might run continuously during a meteor shower.

Ian

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

Well done, you seem to have things working fine now :-) At some time you might want to do more, there's a lot of different things you can do but it might be best to get familiar with SL and confident with the script you have first. You could use your present script to show the diurnal variation of detections over an extended period, especially interesting at a time of a large annual shower. You should also be able to detect pass overs of the ISS using your set up :-) The next big shower is the Geminids starting around the 4th December until the 17th. If you want to read up more on showers there's a lot on the IMO site at http://www.imo.net/

You might also want to use the time to read up about meteor detecting which can be a fascinating subject. Perhaps the best part of this hobby is the fact you can do real science 24/7 regardless of light pollution and the weather! Here's two links you might want to read Ken- 

http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/Detection_of_meteors_by_RADAR.pdf

http://www.popastro.com/meteor/observingmeteors/radioobserving/index.php

And you might want to Google GRAVES radar to get an insight into how it all works.

Good Luck!

Best wishes,

Steve

[jarraman]

hi

I changed the settings a bit,did,t like the way it looked,lol.so changed it back,but I was wondering if you have come across anything like this ,which is off the night before

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

Yes I sometimes got a similar signal using the MetScat_starter_v1 .usr file (I wondered if it was a tropospheric GRAVES signal) and put it down to atmospheric conditions at the time. It was annoying as it triggered SL to count the brighter parts of the trace as if each was a new meteor trail. I put a copy of the screenshot in my observing log last year and will try to attach a copy for you. 

Cheers,

Steve

Graves signal.docx

[The Admiral]

I suppose the critical question is whether the trace is at the same frequency as you'd find the meteors. If it is, then perhaps it is Graves breakthrough (ionospheric scatter, aircraft?), especially as it has the regular pulsing. Otherwise I guess it's just interference of some kind.

Ian

[jarraman]

hi,just checked,roughly same frequency as the meteor hits the night befor.i will keep checking.

ken.

[jarraman]

hi all.

last 2 nights had about 20 hits on the spectrum lab software,seems a bit low.how did every one else do?

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

It's good you are getting some detections but 20 sounds very low but it will depend where your aerial is etc. Have you left the system running all the time or just for a couple of hours? There is a noticeable variation in hourly rate and you might have picked a low hour in which to detect. Here are the number of detections over the last 24 hours my system has picked up-

13th Dec-14th Dec

17-18 hr  22

18-19 hr  37

19-20 hr  58

20-21 hr  81

21-22 hr  125

22-23 hr  47

23-00 hr  29

00-01 hr  10

01-02 hr  50

02-03 hr  94

03-04 hr  139

04-05 hr  157

05-06 hr  153

06-07 hr  169

07-08 hr  119

08-09 hr  93

09-10 hr  74

10-11 hr  45

11-12 hr  38

12-13hr   31

13-14 hr  23

14-15 hr  20

15-16 hr  17

16-17 hr  26

17-18 hr  23

Cheers,

Steve

[The Admiral]

Yes, I agree Ken, it is on the low side I think. During the peaks in the early hours of the last 2 days, I was getting over 100 per hour. Difficult to say why yours is so low though.

Ian

[jarraman]

HI Ian and Steve.

hmmm,no where near that,usually on from 11pm till 9am,antenna in the loft, to laptop in spare bedroom,got it set at 143048.

ken.

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Ken,

Well you are using the equipment when the higher rates are happening, I wonder if you are picking up the strongest signals only? Do you have a list of the times and duration of your detections you could post so we can compare against those we have?

Cheers,

Steve

[The Admiral]

Hi Ken

It is difficult to know what might be the cause. There can be two reasons why you might be getting a low count rate - either your radio detection isn't sensitive enough, or, the script which you are running isn't counting all the events you detect. There will probably be some threshold setting in the script which can be lowered, but of course you can only go so far with this because if it is too low you will start to count 'random noise'. We need to know what script you are using so that we are be able to advise. Also, does your script give you screenshots of events?

As to sensitivity, can you try a couple of things and report back please?

1. Place your cursor on the waterfall trace itself level with the frequency of 2kHz, and you will get a readout showing, (i) frequency, and (ii) signal level, in dB. What signal level are you getting on normal background?
2. Tune to 144.428MHz. This should allow you to detect the 2 metre beacon GB3VHF. The signal is a repeated cycle of continuous tone, frequency shifted tones, continuous tone with time marker pips, and morse code. It should be obvious. Can you try to get a signal level measurement by placing the cursor on the continuous signal?

That will be a start to diagnosing your problems. I will say that the Geminids have given me some very strong signals, so I am a little surprised you are not detecting many.

Ian

[jarraman]

hi guys.

the db levels im getting are -90.13db.

im using the script out of the sky and night magazine,the starter one,i think it detects meteor above a certain level,which i think if i have read it correctly,17.

i hope this helps,also attached a screen capture from the 14th.

ken.

[The Admiral]

Ken, I didn't pick up one at that time (05:54:50). The most obvious one with a similar duration I have is at 05:52:26, and possibly at 06:00:25, though the latter is longer and weaker. Is your system time correct? Even assuming it was the 05:52:26 event, I'm getting similarly strong (though much shorter) events at least every minute, so I can't understand why you're not seeing them.

The background signal level of -90dB is fine, but if we are to be able to help, please provide the results of all the tests suggested; if you want you can wait until the Geminid monitoring is finished before embarking on the remaining one.

Ian