Balloon-borne video observations of Geminids 2016

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using stratospheric balloon-borne video cameras to observe meteors, specifically analyzing the Geminids 2016 event to determine meteoroid flux with reduced atmospheric interference.

Contribution

It presents the design, testing, and implementation of balloon-borne instrumentation for meteor observation, providing new methodology for near-Earth interplanetary matter detection.

Findings

Successful observation of Geminids 2016 meteors from stratospheric balloons

Determined meteoroid flux prior to the Geminids maximum

Validated balloon-borne video observation as a viable method

Abstract

We investigate the observation of meteors with video cameras in stratospheric balloons, overcoming tropospheric handicaps like weather and extinction. We have studied the practical implementation of the idea, designed and tested instrumentation for balloon-borne missions. We have analysed the data of the Geminids 2016 campaign, determining the meteoroid flux just before the maximum. This text is an adaption of the work by the first author for his PhD Thesis: Techniques for near-Earth interplanetary matter detection and characterisation from optical ground-based observatories (Oca\~na, 2017). Refer to his thesis for further detail. The lines here are a summary of the presentation given, for the sake of completeness of these proceedings of the IMC 2018 in Pezinok-Modra. The multimedia material shown during the presentation at IMC 2018 can be found in the Zenodo repository for the ORISON Project and Daedalus Project.