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2018 Lyrid meteor shower

A project log for Asteria Network

Next level citizen science project: an open & global network of low-cost meteor cameras. Goal: explore the Solar System from your home!

denis-vidaDenis Vida 04/23/2018 at 14:010 Comments

Our experimential system with an IMX225 IP camera detected 102 Lyrid meteors in the last 2 nights! The image below shows a stack of all detections.

The concentric circles are stars, the Polaris is in the centre of the image.

The Lyrids come from a long-period Comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher and they are the strongest annual meteor shower coming from a long-period comet!

Meteor showers are transient events, but Lyrids are one of oldest known meteor showers, they were first recoded way back in 687 BC. Their activity is usually low (about 20/hr), as it was this year, but sometimes we witness Lyrid meteor storms with over 100 and up to 700 meteors per hour!


Very soon we are planning to publish details about the IP camera setup and the instructions how to build one yourself. We will also describe the calibration procedure and show that our system can produce science-grade data!

Stay tuned!

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