Saturday, January 04, 2020

listened for meteors

Wishfully hoped to see Quad meteors. From the interwebs: 4 Jan, the peak of the Quadrantid meteor shower (40 to 120 or more per hour) is predicted to occur at 9:00 UT. So 4 local.

I even considered photographing with the BDT. I'd aim to Algieba, wake a 3:00 AM.

Clouded out. The weather from Clear Outside as of 2 Jan 2020, 15:13 had shown red across the board. Various sites as of 3 Jan 2020, 23:12, all looked bad. I decided to not set an alarm.

So, how about observing "online," using some online, real-time, frequency traces. Or listening to bounces of radio signals.

I found the LiveMeteors web page, turned the sound up, watched the scrolling graph for a bit, and listened for short ping and chirp sounds. On the left, in the screen snapshots below.

Then I found Meteorscan, the meteor detection and radio astronomy page. I liked the 3D graph. The notes at the bottom showed a typical meteor strike with a shark-fine shaped pattern. On the right, below.

meteor scanning, audio and visual, 1:00 AM

From 4 Jan, almost 1:00 AM.

more scanning, audio and visual, 3:00 AM

From 4 Jan, around 3:00 AM.

In my travels I stumbled across the Sky Scan web site with the Canadian meteor radio detection page. Lots of cool DIY stuff, how to get started, equipment needed, etc.

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