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Radio Astronomy


Meteor detection is a hobby like ham radio. It comes under the umbrella of amateur radio astronomy. Meteor detection plays a vital role in some of the studies related to space exploration. The people involved in the meteor visualization and detection process are called meteor hunters.

We started to get involved in the process of meteor detection in 2020, continuously detecting meteors over Europe since September. The number of meteor detections depends on the occurrence of meteor showers and sources of meteors in outer space and their approach to earth and many other factors. During a meteor shower event, the number of meteor detections per hour becomes very high.

The Geminids are a prolific meteor shower caused by the object 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be a Palladian asteroid with a "rock comet" orbit. It occurred from the 4th of December to the 17th of December, with a peak on the 14th of December. In December 2020, we confirmed the occurrence of Geminids meteor shower by receiving a significantly higher number of meteor detections than usual.

We only used a laptop with a good internet connection for the detections mentioned above. We used CAMRAS webSDR, which provides signals received by the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope. For post-processing, the signal spectrum lab software was used. We detected around 209 meteors/hour during the meteor shower, whereas in normal conditions, an average of 50-100 meteor detections/hour is expected.

Anyone can be involved in this process. You just need a laptop and an internet connection.