Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK-UPDATED

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Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK-UPDATED

Post by Carbon60 »

Complimentary to Rainer's data, here are mine from the UK.
20210104_Quadrantids.jpg
20210104_Quadrantids.jpg (120.76 KiB) Viewed 1176 times
The Quadrantids are debris from Comet 2003 EH1. I was surprised by the brevity of this shower, which only lasted a day although the counts would suggest it was intense with up to 160 counts per hour (on my system).

Next up will be the Lyrids in April, although by all accounts the hourly rate generally is relatively low for this event. We'll see.

Thanks for looking.

Stu.
Last edited by Carbon60 on Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by Montana »

Excellent data Stuart :hamster:

You always seem to get a third less counts than Rainer, is it by chance that as the Earth rotates Rainer hits the major peak after you. Maybe one day you will get more than him as you hit the peak and as the Earth rotates to his side the peak is missed during his night?

Alexandra


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Stu,

Great and yes it was a short show.

Thanks


regards Rainer

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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by rsfoto »

Hi,

Here is a nice page to see what is going on with the Showers ...

https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Lyrids


regards Rainer

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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by Carbon60 »

Montana wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:30 am Excellent data Stuart :hamster:

You always seem to get a third less counts than Rainer, is it by chance that as the Earth rotates Rainer hits the major peak after you. Maybe one day you will get more than him as you hit the peak and as the Earth rotates to his side the peak is missed during his night?

Alexandra
Hi Alexandra,

That’s a possibility, but Rainer also has more transmitters on the same frequency within range than I do (mine is only one in France), so I think his system may be able to detect more meteors because there’s more chance of receiving a detectable reflection from a greater spread over the sky, hence a larger count.

Stu.


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by marktownley »

Very good Stu! Interesting to see the data.

Forgive me if a silly question (I don't know anything about it!) - the graph shows the number of 'counts / pings' that you get, is there variation in intensity / magnitude of the returns? If so what does this tell us?


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by Carbon60 »

marktownley wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:49 am Very good Stu! Interesting to see the data.

Forgive me if a silly question (I don't know anything about it!) - the graph shows the number of 'counts / pings' that you get, is there variation in intensity / magnitude of the returns? If so what does this tell us?
Hi Mark,

Not silly at all. The system does actually record the intensity (and duration) of the pings, which do vary quite a bit, and I’m sure there’s a lot of useful scientific data there relating to how the burning meteor trail interacts with the transmitted signal. The size of the meteor and it’s speed and trajectory no doubt play a role. This is something I was planning to take a look at. I’m sure there will be plenty of technical papers available on this very subject.

Cheers

Stu.


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by rsfoto »

Carbon60 wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:42 am
Montana wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 8:30 am Excellent data Stuart :hamster:

You always seem to get a third less counts than Rainer, is it by chance that as the Earth rotates Rainer hits the major peak after you. Maybe one day you will get more than him as you hit the peak and as the Earth rotates to his side the peak is missed during his night?

Alexandra
Hi Alexandra,

That’s a possibility, but Rainer also has more transmitters on the same frequency within range than I do (mine is only one in France), so I think his system may be able to detect more meteors because there’s more chance of receiving a detectable reflection from a greater spread over the sky, hence a larger count.

Stu.
Hi Alexandra and Stu,

Interesting. I guess the stations here in my Town Zapata and Ehlert when there is a big meteor shower detect the tinier meteors too but when we look at a normal meteor shower or perhaps daily dust fall onto the eaerth it is not that different.

Look at the image below ans focus on the RMO station Nelson, Zapata and Ehlert with nearly very same values on the highest hour. Nelson is just reading one Station TV RF channel 2 which is 54.31 MHZ (Reno, Nevada, USA ?) and we are reading many TV channels RF channel 7 which is 174.31 MHz. So I guess we have an advantage due to so many stations when very small meteor fall and also I am away from RFI in the town as I am higher. I do not know where Nelson is located e.g. is he is in a town or up on a Hill like me.

There are 9 stations in USA transmitting on RF 54 MHz and the strongest one is in Reno, Nevada with 27.7 kW transmitting power.

While in our case the strongest one is 185 kW and the weakest 26.7 kW (see attachment). There is a nice page where one can trace all transmitters in USA https://www.fcc.gov/media/television/tv-query

One more thing and I guess we are proofing that also at high frequencies meteor detection is possible. In many papers I have read that low frequencies are better but comparing the results of our two stations with the other stations using low frequency we have a good record of capturing meteor echos.

Not much differences and graphic curves are very similar too.

Nelson_Zapata_Ehlert_RMO.JPG
Nelson_Zapata_Ehlert_RMO.JPG (283.97 KiB) Viewed 1120 times
RF7_174-MHz_Zapata_Ehlert.JPG
RF7_174-MHz_Zapata_Ehlert.JPG (43.18 KiB) Viewed 1119 times


regards Rainer

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San Luis Potosi Mexico

North 22° West 101°
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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by rsfoto »

marktownley wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:49 am Very good Stu! Interesting to see the data.

Forgive me if a silly question (I don't know anything about it!) - the graph shows the number of 'counts / pings' that you get, is there variation in intensity / magnitude of the returns? If so what does this tell us?
Hi Marc,

The software SpectrumLab writes you a text file each day over 24 hours and there you can see different values.

The vales are separated by a comma " , " and mean the following

1. Time HH:MM:SS
2. # of Echo (Starts new every hour)
3. Echo strength in dB
4. Surroundig noise in dB
5. Frequency of Echo measured against the scanned frequency
6. Duration of echo in cycles (one cycle is the time of refreshing the waterfall)


TXT file screenshot
SpectrumLab_daily_TXT_file.jpg
SpectrumLab_daily_TXT_file.jpg (542.43 KiB) Viewed 1114 times

SpectrumLab Waterfall
SpectrumLab_continous_Waterfall.jpg
SpectrumLab_continous_Waterfall.jpg (577.97 KiB) Viewed 1112 times

and there is one more monthly file made by Colorgramme software
Colorgramme_RMO_data_file_Ehlert.JPG
Colorgramme_RMO_data_file_Ehlert.JPG (258.4 KiB) Viewed 1110 times


regards Rainer

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North 22° West 101°
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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by Montana »

Great to see the data on Spacewether too :hamster:

Alexandra


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK

Post by Carbon60 »

Montana wrote: Wed Jan 06, 2021 8:05 am Great to see the data on Spacewether too :hamster:

Alexandra
Thanks Alexandra. It was a nice surprise this morning. :)

Stu.


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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK-UPDATED

Post by Carbon60 »

For completion, here's the entire dataset for the month. The Quadrantids certainly stand out against the background sporadics :)
20210131_Quadrantids.jpg
20210131_Quadrantids.jpg (184.07 KiB) Viewed 1027 times
I don't think there will be much more activity until April.

Thanks for looking.

Stu.


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Radio meteor detector.
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Re: Quadrantid Meteor Data from the UK-UPDATED

Post by marktownley »

Thanks for the updates!


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