Meteor camera
A meteor camera is an astronomical instrument for photographic or opto-electronic observation of bright meteors and balls of fire . In order to have a sufficiently large field of view , the camera must have a short focal length. It records the luminous phenomena against the star background ; the star and meteor tracks are usually interrupted by a rotary shutter in order to be able to register the time of the event.
The first meteor cameras were developed in the 1960s. a. at the University Observatory Vienna . In the 1990s, astronomers in the Czech Republic developed automatic cameras that open at the beginning of a clear night and perform long exposures with light-controlled time stamps .
On the initiative of Prague, a central European fireball network was created from around 2000 , which currently includes around 20 meteor stations in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and some neighboring countries. South of Bohemia and Moravia , where the network is densest, the Orion observatory and the Austrian Astro Association in the Lower Austrian Waldviertel near Martinsberg have also been operating such a camera since 2008. The small public observatory there was expanded to include this automatic measuring device following a fundraising campaign by the Austrian Astro Association .