29 November 2002

Two Projects: Asteroid Astrometry and Meteor Radiometry

by Brian Chapel

Editor's Note: In an effort to further encourage scientific work by our members, we are inaugurating a new column where members can share what they are doing with our readers. If you are working on a project or pursuing a long-term scientific interest, write to me and tell me about it. -SG

In response to the excellent suggestion from Vince Mulhollon that SAS members occasionally report what they are doing, this is my contribution.

I have two projects on the go.

The first is asteroid astrometry. Using a small telescope at a local university I am trying to measure the positions of main belt asteroids and submit the observations to the Harvard-Smithsonian Minor Planet Center for use in refining orbits. I am still getting started on this. Progress has been slow so I have not yet contributed any data.

I have encountered multiple obstacles. Not having any official connection with the university, I am dependent on a benevolent retired but busy astronomer to let me into the building. Observations are best made within 2 or 3 hours of local midnight. Since I need sleep to work normal business hours I can really only do the observing on Friday and Saturday nights. On top of that, I also require clear skies which can be quite rare here on the "wet coast" of North America. Having a backyard observatory of my own in a different local microclimate would help with all of these factors but until I can afford that I will press on with what I have. Hopefully, I will have formally submitted some observations before the next SAS conference.

The other project is meteor radiometry. It is largely a response to the obstacles of the asteroid project. I want to construct an automated station for recording meteors by detecting radio signals which they reflect from TV and FM broadcast transmitters. Last year I did a very simple test to see if I could hear anything. Encouraged by that, I did careful manual counts of the meteor signals I was able to hear during the recent Leonid meteor shower and will submit the data to a collection point within the next few of weeks.

For this project I am dependent upon neither anyone else's schedule nor the weather. The biggest problems are RF interference and, as with the asteroids, time and sleep. I currently cope with the interference by either tolerating it or collecting data in the wee hours of the morning when the nearby channel 2 TV broadcaster is off the air. A better solution will be to do my listening on quieter frequencies. Even when I have worked around the channel 2 problem I will want to collect more data so the ultimate solution will be to automate everything as others have done for 7x24 monitoring.

I hope others will tell you what they are working on. Although I have not been in contact with any SAS members for either of these projects, I still feel that membership in SAS and attendance at the first Citizen Scientist Conference have motivated me to proceed with both of them. Despite wanting to do modest research for many years, I never really got going on anything. I had been using amateur astronomy and amateur radio, respectively, as the context in which to view the work I wanted to do. Even though both of those communities contain people interested in doing scientifically useful work, membership in them never really moved me from daydreaming to actually doing something. I am personally indebted to Shawn for how he has defined and characterized amateur/citizen science as an endeavor with both a noble history and current relevance. Kindred spirits can be hard to find here in a small city on a sparsely populated island so meeting other SAS members last summer was also an inspiration for me.