AllSky7 Camera

The society's AllSky7 Meteor camera, AMS245, is now operating, joining three others in the South Island.

It contains seven Sony Starvis IMX290 project cameras mounted on a custom cut aluminum plate and covered with a 250mm acrylic dome. Five of them are mounted around the circumference (72° apart) creating 360 degree coverage of the sky. The other two are looking higher up diametrically opposite one another. Camera 6 is above camera 1 looking north, and camera 7 is directly opposite looking south. Our camera is the latest version with, as well, a fish eye lens (camera 8) at the top, imaging the whole sky but in smaller detail.

The images are available on line, updated every 15 minutes. https://allsky7.net/index.html?&country=NZ

will show you the four cameras in NZ, as above. Click on the one you are interested in and it will give you a display like this -

The images are uploaded to the AMS network joining the roughly 90 in Europe and 4 in the USA. They can be manipulated by clicking on them. The images are searched automatically for fireballs; very bright meteors, which have the potential for dropping meteorites. If at least two sites record such a potential meteorite dropper, it can be

triangulated and then a search mounted for the meteorite. Operating 24hours a day, doubles the chance of a find, compared to only night observations. They can see down to about magnitude +4 on a dark night. Anything brighter than -3 is considered a fireball, and visible in a bright sky!

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