Greetings
I recently obtained and set up a new RBoom setup.
I am enclosing few wave clips of some curious wave forms.
I have been looking for meteors and wasn’t sure if these were meteor waves.
Any ideas what these wave are? They seem to /ccur during quiet times.
thanks
tom
Greetings
We never have any type of Earthquakes in our area, so I am curious as to what these waves are
Tom
Hello Tom,
These plots are indeed interesting, as they were recorded during quiet times, as you have written.
@sheeny knows a lot about meteor tracks on his BOOM sensor, so I’m also curious to see if these traces match any of the previous detections he has posted here on the forum.
Greetings
Just wondering what the waveforms are.
There have been a number of similiar waveforms and was wodering if it was the Lyrids meteors. Has anyone been tracking the Lyrids meteor showers.
tom
G’Day Tom.
Interesting signatures. I had a look at the data on dataview. I don’t think they are meteors, however. The frequencies are too high IMO.
If you have a look at them in the spectrogram, you will see the peak frequencies are around 20 Hz for the first and last example and around 16-17Hz for the middle one. Meteors typically have dominant frequencies between 0.5 and 10Hz. They also appear to be quite strong signals - of the order of 1 Pa - which is not impossible, but very unusual for a meteor signal.
The waveform shape looks like classic meteor though. Intriguing.
The third example shows some beating in the waveform before and after - about 0.4 to 0.5s period, so two frequencies about 2 to 2.5Hz different interfering, but the signal is not the result of beating alone.
Because the signal is so strong, it could be something quite close. I suggest you do some experiments with things like opening/closing doors, and noting when things like fridges, air cons, etc start and stop.
Al.
Greetings:
Thanks for having a look a my waveforms.
I am lookin for my first meteors or fireballs.
Have you seen any meteors or fireballs recently? have you seen any meteors during the Lyrids showers?
Do you know of any websties that report recent meteors or fireballs?
My RBoom is operating from batteries which are trickled charged, so i am hoping to avoid power glitches from appliances.
thanks again
tom
G’Day Tom,
I haven’t detected many possible meteors of late because I haven’t really been looking (listening). I was quite keen to learn the Boom’s capabilities last year and put a lot of effort into it, but in the end I found that for everyday meteors, the my S&B is quite deaf. That may be partly to do with where and how I have mine installed, but I think the sensitivity of the Boom is also a limiting factor.
I’m also very careful to describe any detections as Possible Meteors, as I don’t have the means to confirm a visual meteor to correlate to the signal. If you have an all sky camera and there are other camera nearby to allow calculation of the trajectory, then you are in a position to correlate the visual meteor with the IR signal allowing for sound travel time.
Below is the only Possible Meteor signal I have bothered to document this year. I mainly documented it because it was quite large, so I was hoping to hear about a coincidental sighting/event:
I have found that on busy meteor shower nights, sometime I have only detected a handful of possible meteor signals. So, no, I haven’t really been chasing the Lyrids which at +34° is largely a northern hemisphere shower.
However, large bolides and re-entering space junk are louder sources and much better suited to detection on the Boom. Here’s is the signal from the Spacex Crew 1 Dragon Trunk Re-entry detected last year but reworked (with correct Sound Pressure Levels) earlier this year:
BTW when I suggested taking notice of when fridges start, etc I wasn’t thinking of electrical interference or spikes at all. Motors and machines of all types can produce infrasound signals on start up, or stop or while running - start up and stop obviously most likely to produce a spike like a meteor, so my advice still stands. Anything that can make sound can make infrasound, so learn what local noise sources you have. For example, I can identify doors and windows being opened or closed, the dogs going through the doggy doors (and whether they are going in or out!), sometimes footsteps in the house, the washing machine, the dryer, the dishwasher, the printer, my NAS drive, trucks passing on the road out the front, etc. These are all the interesting (but boring once you know what they are) things you need to know so you can start finding the truly unusual things. ;o)
Al.
PS websites… I found there’s a satellite reporting system covering the US that reports meteor/bolides which looks like it could be very useful if you are in the area the satellites cover. Unfortunately Australia isn’t covered by anything similar. I don’t recall the URL but I’ll search for it again and post a link if I can find it.
Al.
I haven’t found the site I was looking at previously, but it’ll be data from the GOES 16 and GOES 17 satellites. From just reading a bit more then, it appears they will still only detect the larger meteors and bolides. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing if that’s all a Boom can do too.
Al.
You need to get a raspberry shake too 
I only say that because then you will appreciate that the surface of the ground is quite easy to vibrate in the 20 Hz range. If something strikes the ground, it will emit some sound having a frequency of about 20 Hz including a range from perhaps 10 to 30 Hz. This depends on the characteristics of your local soil, but 20-25 Hz is typical. I have seen this with a large branch falling off a (dead) tree, for example.
Usual RShake installations are close enough to the surface, or right on the surface, so they respond to this surface shake. If you see an RS and RB impulse at the same time, then it was likely a local event. It could be something striking the earth, or it could be a loud sound. However, if the source was a sound loud enough to shake the earth, you probably would detect it by ear.
Going the other way, I should also mention that the RB sensor has a (small) seismic response, as well as a pressure response. If the RB is mounted flat (the usual way) and sitting firmly on the ground, it will register strong seismic events - vertical motion with a frequency of 20-40 Hz (local earthquakes - which are rare in my part of the world).
There is a lot of fun you can have by running both RB and RS. For example, here is a blast at a nearby quarry, as seen by both devices.
From the time stamps, I can tell exactly how far away it was.
Ken
I had to smile at Ken’s first line.
I have an RS&B and the first step I take when I find a potential meteor signal in infrasound is to check the seismograph signal at the same time to be sure it’s not a seismic signal triggering an infrasound response. If there’s a corresponding seismic signal then it’s not a meteor (IMO) without confirmation of a sighting and the correct sound travel time.
Al.
Greetings
Thanks for your meteor posting logs.
Your posting helps me to get a better felling what meteors should look like including their frequency responses. I still haven’t got a sense of noise caused by doors or window and or appliances. Weather is still a bit cold here, So windows and doors are. Mostly closed, but I do have a neighbor’s door close by.
I did find the American Meteor Society which logs meteor and fireball events, so I will take a closer look at their website.
I will also take a look at the GOES 16 & 17 satellite info.
It would be very interesting to also track meteors via an all sky raspberry pi camera
or a radio setup for meteor scanning to correlate date and times.
Thanks for your insights and info
Tom
