Development of a Very Faint Meteor Detection System based on an EMCCD Sensor and Matched Filter Processing

Abstract

The mass ranges of meteors, imaged by electro-optical (EO) cameras and backscatter radar receivers, for the most part do not overlap. Typical EO systems detect meteoroid masses down to 10 −5 kg or roughly magnitude +2 meteors when using moderate field of view optics, unintensified optical components, and meteor entry velocities around 45 km/sec. This is near the high end of the mass range of typical meteor radar observations. Having the same mass meteor measured by different sensor wavelength bands would be a benefit in terms of calibrating mass estimations for both EO and radar. To that end, the University of Western Ontario (UWO) has acquired and deployed a very low light imaging system based on an electron-multiplying CCD camera technology. This embeds a very low noise, per pixel intensifier chip in a cooled camera setup with various options for frame rate, region of interest and binning. The EO system of optics and sensor was optimally configured to collect 32 frames per second in a square field of view 14.7 degrees on a side, achieving a single-frame stellar limiting magnitude of m G = +10.5. The system typically observes meteors of +6.5. Given this hardware configuration, we successfully met the challenges associated with the