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One of my first serious projects when I was a young astronomer was recording Meteors for the Junior Astronomical Society (JAS). Recently I was able to investigate using a Watec 902H camera to record the Perseid Meteor shower.

My initial experiments using my trusty laptop – the one I used to use for imaging before I had the observatory – were less than successful. I tried a USB video capture adapter and quite simply the processing power of the laptop just wasn’t up to it. I sourced a Pentium 4 DELL PC off eBay and also a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card (Model PVR150). UFO Capture just wouldn’t recognise the card and with HandyAvi frames were being dropped giving dotted lines on the meteor trails.

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I then went back to the USB adapter and this worked fine with both UFO Capture and HandyAvi. The scene was set and the night after the maximum of the Perseid the skies cleared. I managed to capture 19 Perseids! I also tried various lenses and the best I’ve found so far is a Computar 8mm f/0.95.

Summary of my first working system

• PC: Dell Optiplex GX280, P4HT, 2Gb RAM, XP Home
• Video Capture: Compro C200 Plus USB adapter
• Software: UFO Capture or HandyAvi
• Camera: Watec902H
• Lens: Computar 8mm f/0.95

cpu load is only around 15% running UFOCapture with a detect area for the full image (640x480), limiting magnitude is around 4.7

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Future development: I’d like to try a slightly wider lens maybe the Computar 6mm f/0.95 or maybe an array of cameras!

My thanks to my fellow Astronomer and friend William Stewart for the loan of the Watec902H and Computar lens.

Hints and Tips

Focussing:
Find a bright, centre in field of view and focus past the focus point, repeat to home in on best focus.

Aiming the camera:
Try to aim at 45° to the radiant. For the Perseids I tried the square of Pegasus to the East and Ursa Minor to the West. I captured more meteors in the square of Pegasus.