As part of the Western Meteor Group’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network sensor suite, we have deployed seven all-sky video systems designed to automatically detect bright fireballs. The cameras detect bright meteors as they burn up in the atmosphere.  The all-sky video network component of the SOMN was developed originally from hardware and software supplied by Sandia National Labs as part of their sentinel camera network. Our intent was to use a dense array of all-sky cameras (with a spacing of order 50-100 km) to record many meteors from multiple stations. The intent is to use the moderate precision metric data for comparison with other instrumental recordings of the same event and to act as a “trigger” for other instruments in the SOMN. Here we sacrifice precision in favour of semi-automation in reduction. The distribution of cameras (yellow circles) in the network is shown below. For more information on Western Meteor Group’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network sensor suite please visit their website.

The distribution of cameras to monitor meteor events in southwestern Ontario (yellow dots). 1 – Western University, London; 2 – Elginfield Observatory; 3 – McMaster University, Hamilton; 4 – Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR), Tavistock; 5 – Carr Observatory, Collingwood;6 – Orangeville; 7 – Kincardine.