Updated August 24, 2002
Meteor Tracker; see image at http://www.gvarros.com/meteor_tracker.jpg

The Meteor Tracker is a computerized high speed optical tracking system
that allows high resolution imaging of meteors. It uses two cameras;
one with a wide field of view (FOV) to detect and track the meteor 
and the other camera with a narrow FOV (currently 6 X 4 degrees) to 
image the meteor in higher resolution.  

Tracking is accomplished using stepper motors that drive a rocker box 
holding the narrow field camera. One motor drives the rocker box up 
and down in altitude and the second is mounted on the rocker box and 
drives the camera left and right via gearing. The wide FOV camera's 
NTSC signal is fed into a Windows based PC where a program monitors 
the video frames for motion.  Once a detection occurs, commands are 
sent via the parallel port to drive a dual stepper motor controller 
that in turn drives the stepper motors. This "detect and slew" process 
is repeated until the meteor is no longer detectable in the wide field 
camera/computer system.  

The detection and tracking software was written in C++ and runs on 
Windows PC's and is highly configurable. It allows any wide FOV camera's 
signal to be processed and thus drive the narrow field camera as long as 
they are oriented on parallel planes and centered on the same spot in 
the sky. The software has proven to be completely stable and runs all 
night unattended.

The computer currently used is a 333 MHz Pentium II with 64 Mb ram. 

The wide field camera system currently consists of a Gen II image
intensified camera with a 75 degree FOV. A Supercircuits PC-23-C 
is used afocally with the intensifier, to obtain the view which
is fed into the PC as an NTSC video signal.

The narrow field camera is a PC-164 with a 6 X 4 degree FOV.