Augmented-Reality Meteor Camera (3 December 2019)

This is an 'augmented-reality' meteor camera video feed from 3 December 2019 (which I just finished processing). A fisheye lens was used to capture a 150° angle of sky. I wrote some software to calculate the pixel-to-'celestial sphere' transformation, which now allows the location of stars and other celestial bodies observed in other timestamped images to be measured based on their position on the camera's chip. This video uses that transformation to overlay the horizontal and equatorial coordinate systems, to overlay constellation lines, and to circle identified stars in green and other catalogue stars in red.

This hardware setup and software development is one of the early steps in a project for meteor detection and trajectory determination. With one camera, the apparent trajectory of a meteor can be measured. With two or more cameras separated by a baseline distance and making simultaneous observations, more useful information can be determined such as an accurate detailed trajectory, including altitude, speed, and in the case of meteorites, an impact site probability map.