“Falling Star”: Software for Processing of Double-Station TV Meteor Observations

Abstract

Software named “Falling Star” has been developed for digital processing of double-station TV meteor observations. It was designed for measurement and calculation of both kinematic and photometric parameters of faint meteors observed with any video system. Data from video recordings are first digitized as standard AVI files, and then converted into the software’s TVS (TV sequence) format. Additional astronomical information like date, time of observations, geographic position of point of the observation and horizontal coordinates of TV camera optical axis orientation are added to the files. These parameters allow the right ascension and declination of the optical center of camera for the moment of meteor flight to be calculated. “Falling Star” includes a range of automated procedures for the identification of frame stars with star catalogues, search of movable meteor-like objects inside frame, calculation of equatorial coordinates and photometry. Finally, meteor trajectory parameters, orbital elements and brightness curves are calculated. Errors of calculations are determined using Monte-Carlo method.