Guest Editorial - 10 Years of the IMO Video Meteor Network
Sirko Molau · WGN, Journal of the International Meteor Organization · 2009
In 1992 I did my first meteor recordings by video. In the next year I started to work on a computer-based meteor detection and analysis with a cheap, custom-made framegrabber. In the beginning, the computer hardware was too slow to do everything in real-time, but right from the start I dreamt of an automated meteor camera. Based on the experience I gained with the first software, I started to work on MetRec around 1997/98. In the beginning, the software was only able to detect meteors. I remember a discussion I had with a German visual meteor watcher after a presentation of the software at some meeting. What he had seen was not sufficient to him. He envisioned a camera that he would install at a dark side, and all he would need to do was to start the system. Then everything should be done automatically: The meteors should be detected, measured, and stored by software, that in the end he only was to collect the observing results. And I remember my reply, that this was wishful thinking: I knew that computers would support us with the analysis of video data, but a fully automated system seemed impossible to me. Still, what he had said was in fact my own dream from the early days on, and his comment remained in the back of head for many years. In the next months, MetRec further evolved and new functions were implemented. Early 1999 I realized, that an automated system had become possible. Instead of only analysing old video tapes for testing I started to record the night sky in real time and collect meteor data in March 1999. By the end of March, I presented first results at the AKM spring meeting and it was no big deal to convince Jurgen Rendtel, a much more active meteor observer than me, to do the same with his own camera. That was the beginning of the IMO Video Meteor Network. Also in subsequent months and years, a number new functions were added to MetRec. Many of these were inspired by the experiences we made with every-day operation of MetRec. Only a few years later we saw the first truly automated camera systems which were powered on at dusk by a time switch and shut down on the next morning. For the last three years, I have been operating myself cameras at a remote site that I visit only every other month to check the system, clean the front window and collect the data. Now, 10 years after my first real-time observations, the IMO network has evolved to a community of observers in many different countries who record large amounts of meteor data in each clear night. How useful these data are is demonstrated by the analysis that is presented in this issue of WGN. And as the network is further growing, we will collect even more data in the future and obtain even more precise results about the major and minor meteor showers round the year. In the beginning, there was a dream: The dream, to automatically record and analyse video meteors in large quantities. For many years I spent most of my spare time to make this dream come true (and I am still doing so these days), but it is a wonderful feeling to see that we have reached what seemed to be futuristic to me a decade ago. This is the time to earn the fruits of our work!