Electro-Optical Observations
The Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory
(CAMO)
The High Resolution Narrow-field Camera
Inside each shed are two separate low light level video systems.
The second camera system making up CAMO is a narrow field, fast response mirror system, based on the AIM-IT system developed by P. Gural (Gural, 2004). This system consists of a wide-field of view, high frame rate CCD camera (Imperx LYNX IPX-VGA120-L) lens coupled to an ITT Nitecam model 380i generation 3 image intensifer. The camera operates at 80 frames per second at a resolution of 640x480 and produces 12 bit images. The wide field camera has a 25 x 10 field of view and a stellar sensitivity of +7. This camera tracks meteors in real time and the positional information is then used to position two mirrors controlled by two galvanometers which track the meteor in real time. The mirrors reflect light from the meteor to a telescope which also has an ITT Nitecam model 380i generation 3 image intensifer and an Imperx LYNX IPX-VGA120-L CCD camera located at the telescope focus. This system has a field of view of 1.5 degrees and also updates at 80 frames per second. Some example wide field and corresponding narrow field events can be found here. The mirror system is shown below:
