Research
Funded Research
Construction of all-sky cameras
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head Steve Horan recently received a new grant from Sandia National Laboratories for his project entitled “Construction of All-Sky Cameras.” The purpose of the Sky Sentinel project is to work with Sandia National Laboratories to construct and field their instruments for ground-based all-sky monitoring of meteor events. These instruments were designed at Sandia and will be part of a national network of meteor monitors. Each instrument is composed of an electronic camera, image acquisition software, and support electronics. Each instrument will be directed at a location with a clear view of the horizon, for example a roof top. The instrument will operate continuously to look for bright meteor events. The data from the instruments will be pooled so that meteor tracks can be analyzed for trajectory information. The project runs through May of 2008 and received $54,000.