Meteor Detection Using Argo

I should have posted some of the screen caps to show what Argo is capable of showing when using TV stations for meteor detection. These are from a session monitoring CHBX Channel 2 Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario broadcasting at 55.24MHz.

Here's one showing a couple of typical events. At left is an epsilon reflection from a meteor, while the slanted line at right is probably an aircraft flying at flight level somewhere near the midpoint of a line between my location in Minnesota and CHBX.

The next image is of an overdense reflection from what I assume was a larger meteor.

Most meteor reflections are faint and very short in time span (less than a second). The overdense and epsilon reflections are less common, and can come in a variety of forms--here's one:

I would like to catch a nice head reflection eventually.

Because Argo shows so many faint meteors, analyzing a series of screen caps will be interesting--and a lot of work.  I probably won't do much more with this until the Perseids, which fall conveniently between the Nebraska Star Party and the eclipse.

Meteor Detection using National Weather Service weather stations

This is more of an update on what I've been doing since I got things working using TV station video carrier frequencies. Last time I was able to get what looked like a decent diurnal cycle out of a day's observation of Channel 2 (CHBX, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario); before that I'd tried using regional weather service stations and been stymied by what looked like aircraft-created reflections. I live about 6 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (A Delta airline hub) and it has a lot of traffic.

Argo did so well at getting the most out of the TV data that I thought it worth trying with the weather stations.  It did not fail me.

Here is an 8 minute plot of activity at 162.475MHz:

It's a real mess, isn't it? Most if not all of that is air traffic. To see what it's telling us, let's start with a quieter time and add a little annotation:

The curved lines are reflections from aircraft arriving or departing the airport; the horizontal lines are the carriers from several weather stations. Note that they're slightly out of tune. The audio shift between them is roughly equal to the difference in the carrier frequencies, so all four are within about 45Hz of each other, an error of one part in four million. The strongest two stations ("B" and "C") are probably Rochester MN and Spooner, WI.

Argo shows the reflections clearly. The first diagram contains not just curves like these but other lines that probably represent flyovers, diversions, and other course changes aircraft make near an airport. Unfortunately, none of them look like the things I was able to see with TV.

I'll let the system run overnight and hope that the signals don't saturate like they have in the past. Maybe I'll see some meteor signatures in the flight free early hours of morning?

If I don't, I'm going to have to question the usefulness of weather stations for meteor detection. Even with that negative result I'll probably take my setup to this year's Nebraska Star Party where the aviation activity is considerably less.

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The Virgo Cluster mosaic is now half done:

This is all I'm going to get this year, but it's not bad for such a terrible spring.