[BAA-ebulletin 00828] Live observations of Geminid meteors on the BAA website

[BAA electronic bulletins service]

This weekend will be the highlight of the meteor observing year, with
the Geminid meteor shower reaching its peak in the early hours of
Sunday morning. You can find details of how to observe the shower in
the eBulletin that John Mason circulated yesterday.

To help as many people as possible to see the meteors, we are also
running an online observing event on the BAA website, which you can
find here: <http://britastro.org/2014geminids>. We are posting images
recorded by two upward-pointing CCTV cameras operated by Nick James in
Chelmsford.

Nick's cameras automatically take images whenever they detect movement
in the sky, and the images are posted to the BAA website almost
immediately. In the past couple of nights, they have already recorded
more than a dozen meteors, and we hope they will record many more over
the weekend.

The automated nature of these cameras means that in addition to
meteors, they also detect many planes, birds, clouds, especially in
the early evening. If you have an account on the BAA website (which
you can set up by visiting <http://www.britastro.org/user/register>),
you can submit votes for which images you think are of genuine
meteors, and which you think bogus. You can also see what other users
think.

This is, of course, no substitute for going out, doing your own meteor
watches and submitting your results to the Meteor Section. See
<http://britastro.org/article_render/5885> for more information about
how to do that. However, our online event will hopefully prove a fun
way for you to see some of the very fine images being produced by
video cameras operated by Meteor Section members in the NEMETODE
network.

Clear skies!

Dominic.

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Dr Dominic Ford
BAA Website Manager