#Transient luminous events full
#Transient luminous events pro
#Transient luminous events Pc

This image was taken at a 1/60 second exposure rate! The star cluster towards the top of the image is the Pleiades and the Hyades are in the bottom right corner. Stars down to magnitude 7.3 can be discerned in this image. Here is a stacked image I took of the Taurus region using a 16mm F1.4 lens with the camera pointed almost on the vertical. I am impressed with its low light sensitivity and as such want to share an example. The Watec 902H is a very sensitive camera. He has noticed that F0.8 lenses tend to over expose sprites with this camera. I have spoken with a researcher in this field and he has told me that he recommends F1.2 or F1.4 lenses for the Watec 902H. So I have settled on an F1.4 lens which seems to work fine. Ideally one would use an F0.8 lens for sprite imaging, but the 902H doesnвЂ™t have enough room between the ccd and the lens for the corrective lens needed when using F0.8 lenses. This setup solves this problem.ДЇor the lens side of things IвЂ™m currently using a Computar 12mm F1.4 1/2вЂі CS mount lens. With higher focal lengths itвЂ™s possible to get more detail from TLEвЂ™s, but pointing of the camera becomes critical. This is very important when using higher focal lengths like 16mm lenses for example.

#Transient luminous events full

This setup allows for full control of the camera orientation. In addition, I am using another rotor for elevation control. As can be seen on the right I placed the camera in an outdoor surveillance camera enclosure and placed it about 25 feet off the ground atop an antenna rotor for Az control. A separate well regulated 12V power supply which can deliver at least 250mA rounds out the camera setup. I use a Conexant PCI four channel card and connect the camera to it via a 50 foot double shielded coax cable.

#Transient luminous events Pc

The Watec 902H outputs an analog interlaced signal that can be acquired by a PCI or USB CCTV PC card. These cameras are well regarded in sprite research and can be purchased used for very reasonable prices. I then got serious and purchased a Watec 902H 1/2вЂі CCD camera. Sure I can run long exposures with this camera and manage to detect 6th magnitude stars after 5 seconds of exposure, but what you need is this level of sensitivity with 1/50sec exposure rates! It didnвЂ™t help that I was using less than adequate lenses on the webcam as CS mount lenses were out of the question (no way to mount them to the webcam).

#Transient luminous events pro

It didnвЂ™t take long before I realized that the QC Pro 3000 is just not sensitive enough for this sort of work. I first started experimenting with sprite detection using my modified Logitech QC Pro 3000. I will cover my experience with the imaging side of this project here. My experience with the VLF portion of this project is documented in my SID Receiver page. IвЂ™m a VLF enthusiast and my goal for this project, besides optically imaging TLEвЂ™s, was to detect sprite induced VLF disturbances on VLF transmitters and VLF audio signatures. This lens lowers the lux value of the camera enough points to make it plenty sensitive enough for TLE detection. The example image to the left was taken with an F1.2 12mm lens, and as can be seen the sprite is a little over exposed in the brightest sections. To improve on the total light gathering power of the lens the use of lower F-stop values is needed. An F1.4 lens is near the threshold for imaging sprites.

For example, I use a Watec 902H camera which has a lux value of. Camera sensitivity is very important when imaging sprites because of their short life spans. These B/W cameras fail to detect the red color of sprites but make up for this by being much more sensitive than color ccd imagers. The most effective way to image sprites is via the use of low light B/W ccd cameras. They are mostly red in color due to the breakdown of the rarefied air high above the storm and the fact that nitrogen glows red when exited by low energy electrons in this type of discharge. Sprites are associated with strong positive cloud to ground and intracloud lightning.