Below is an email I sent to Noah Brosch on 2006 October 26 outlining a new plan of attack with promoting a global network of wide-angle night sky cameras. If anyone seeing this has any constructive comments please feel free to post about it.
Hi Noah,
As you know, I have been thinking a lot about if and how the Night Sky Live project can continue. It is not now generating much science. It is taking a toll on my time. Nevertheless, it is still an impressive network, and retains at least the potential to do good science. Wise, Canary Islands, Cerro Pachon, Hanle, and Siding Spring still work, and Haleakala might come back on soon. Six active nodes over the planet is not bad. There is still nothing like it.
So I will try to keep it going, and what follows are some milestones I suggest that we work toward:
1. Try to fit as many of the existing CONCAMs with optical choppers as possible. We can ask that the observatories themselves do this, although they might balk since they wouldn't themselves be getting anything out of it.
2. Try to find new sites about 50 kilometers of some existing CONCAM sites that would house a CONCAM1 (with chopper), so that we can get start getting 3D meteor trajectories. I would send Peter one and see if he can get another one in at Lick, for parallax.
3. Find other CONCAM-like devices and ask if we can frame grab their images, bringing them into the network, in some sense. We can then ask that these sky monitors also put in optical choppers, although of course they might ignore us.
4. Have all CONCAMs run by their home observatories, with Night Sky Live grabbing the images becoming the standard. Just like Wise, we want home observatories to be able to log in to their own CONCAMs and keep them running when they go down. The Night Sky Live will become more like the Wikipedia of all-sky cameras, with each site maintaining their own "entry." I think this is more sustainable than the present model in the long run.
5. In the future, we should request that each observatory also BUILDs their own CONCAM, or purchase one, possibly
from SBIG. We should facilitate this as much as possible by putting as many drawings, etc. as possible on the web,
possibly as part of the NSL bulletin board. This way, the home observatory would feel more ownership from the CONCAMs, and be better able to fix them. Alternatively, we could direct all new CONCAMs to be constructed commercially by, say SBIG. I also think this is a more sustainable model in the long run.
6. Start practicing with radar. I will keep at least one CONCAM1 back, fit it with a chopper (given your expertise),
and run it in tandem with Melissa's radar when it becomes active here at MTU. Also, I would like to investigate
whether any observatories have radar facilities already that could be of use to us.
7. I will NOT submit an NSF proposal for Nov. 15, but I will ask that an existing NSF CONCAM proposal be augmented (for a
few $K) so we can get new hard-drives here at MTU and a new server. My thinking tonight is that we should get a
few meteors imaged with optical choppers to show off in any new proposal to make it stronger. Also we should know if
optical CONCAMs are seeing the same meteors as passive radar.
8. Actively participate in your (Noah's) Antarctic meteor effort, if possible. That is good science in its own right, and its results would also bolster a future grand proposal.
9. I think we should indeed posture for a big NSF proposal for about this time next year, Nov. 15, 2007. Our science
drivers would be that meteors can discern sub-streams in showers and that simultaneous radar observations in
multiple bands gives clues to a meteor's composition. Possibly other science objectives will come forward. Perhaps asking the NSF that each station have their CONCAMs replaced by CONCAM5s with optical choppers and radar. The major
investigators would be me, you, Peter, and Melissa, if you are all willing. I even think we could get many of the
observatories currently running CONCAMs to agree to support such a proposal.
10. I think we should pursue DoD funding as well, as perhaps we can help DoD better understand their radar meteor
background, and get information that might help protect the planet from future comet strikes. This would need
to be better investigated. Would you agree with these approaches? Any other thoughts?
- Bob