MALBEC: fine-tuning of the pointing direction of cameras for stratospheric double-station observation of meteor showers

Abstract

To guarantee the successful observation of a meteor shower, the “Meteor Automated Light Balloon Experimental Camera” (MALBEC) will put two meteor cameras aboard stratospheric nacelles, at altitudes where clouds can no longer hinder the observation. After simulating the 3D-trajectory of each nacelle and checking the overall feasibility of double-station meteor observation, the attitude of each camera is set and different configurations are explored. It often happens in meteor sciences that the two cameras are pointing towards each other. However, we show that an azimuth offset sometimes better suits the observation constraints and yields a high number of observed double-station meteors. A roll offset of the camera might be applied in order to maximise the atmosphere area overlap by the two cameras. Similarly, to increase the size of the field of view or to decrease the elevation of the camera, both result in a higher number of detected meteors, as expected. However, this comes with a loss of spatial resolution, which decreases the number of accurate measurements of meteoroid orbits. A satisfactory compromise is to increase the time of flight thanks to ceiling-balloon capabilities. In addition, we find that the current method used to compute the expected number of meteors from a stratospheric platform underestimates this number. More work is needed to understand the link between visual ground-based observations and stratospheric video records.

The “Mobile Observation of Meteor” (MoMET) device

“…In addition, the most serious concern for the success of a meteor observation campaign is the influence of the Moon and the presence of clouds at the time of the shower maximum. To overcome such limitations, a stratospheric solution would be ideal [38], since the camera would be located above the cloud, at high altitude where there is nearly no light diffusion.…”

“…Comet past activity G.4,G.7 ZHR 1 [34] Meteoroid life time expectancy G.5 ZHR, SFD 1 [23] Meteoroid composition G.8 Spectroscopy 1 [5] Meteoroid tensile strength G.9 light curve, 3D-trajectory 2 [6,8] Origin of the outburst G.11,G.10 accurate orbit 2 [13,41] Parent body G.3 accurate orbit 2 [13] Age of the meteoroid trail G.12 ZHR, orbit distribution 2 [1] observation cameras on-board stabilised stratospheric balloons [37]. Although the optimisation of such flight was recently demonstrated [38], any stratospheric double-station setup still needs to be performed today.…”

“…Thanks to the development of the Global Meteor Network, we used RaspBerry-pi 4 (8Go RAM) and the RMS software [40,42]. We also managed to deploy the RMS software on Odroid XU4Q platforms, also used for stratospheric observations [38,44]. A server computer is connected to a GPS antenna to comply with constraints S.8 and S.7.…”

A 2022 τ-Herculid meteor cluster from an airborne experiment: automated detection, characterization, and consequences for meteoroids

“…The agreement in detections between the "RMS" software (Vida et al 2016(Vida et al , 2021 and the new approach proposed by our team (Millet et al 2022a,b;Petreto et al 2018) allows us to test and validate the approach implemented and to increase the Technology Readiness Level to 5. Such a tool might be used for future detection of meteors from orbiting spacecraft (using e.g., the SPOSH camera; Bouquet et al 2014;Oberst et al 2011), or more generally from mobile observation platforms (Vaubaillon et al 2021).…”

Computing optical meteor flux using Global Meteor Network data

“…This avoids applying large corrections due to high meteor range and atmospheric extinction for large atmospheric areas. We take this conservative approach to avoid a major source of uncertainty (Vaubaillon et al 2021), namely high corrections which may skew absolute estimates when debiasing (Galligan & Baggaley 2004). As part of this procedure we also remove all meteors observed below an altitude of 𝜖 < 20 • .…”