Night Sky Viewing

[n8bdk]

Not sure where exactly to post this thread so I'll dump it here in chit-chat. I've been toying with the idea of catching meteorites on camera. In late March, we had a daytime meteorite that produced a sonic boom in Ohio, and a few nights ago there was another high profile visible fireball in the sky that produced no noise.

My question for the brain trust here is: Do I need to homebrew some kind of camera like a Sony IMX 585 sensor and find a wide angle lens and a camera dome that will work for me or is there something available commercially out there that I can open a box, mount pointed to the sky and not have to think about again? After some research it appears that a lot of the Starvis/2/3 sensors end up in dashcams but I get the feeling that if I were to pluck a sensor directly out of one (probably build on a custom backplane w/o PoE availability) it won't do me much good at all. I also don't want USB2/3 as my transmission means. PoE or bust.

I don't care about feeding to meteor networks, and I don't care about anything other than the recordings I get off the camera. I feel like its irrelevant but I'll be dumping this video into an Avigilon Unity 8 system. I understand the market for such a camera is VERRRRRYYYYYY small so if I need to build something then so be it, I'm not afraid to do so but I also like opening boxes and going the "happy and stupid" route sometimes too.

 

[wittaj]

Many here use the T180 as a sky cam.

 

[n8bdk]

Would you mind elaborating on exactly which T180 you're talking about? I see a trail cam and several others that don't mention low-light conditions.

 

[wittaj]

Because of the distance "low light" isn't really needed as you can run default settings.

I put together a sky/roof rig with (4) 180* Color4K cams...

I decided I wanted to see ALL of the things... After some posts on here about weather and watching the sky, and wishing I would have had my own, better footage when a meteorite came down a few months ago..., I figured I would put together my own sky cam rig. And, because I can't just do things...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[wittaj]

And an example from his setup

Thread 'Skycam rig finally pays off.'

Skycam rig finally pays off.

Some of you may remember my post about the last meteorite that fell and was only captured on potatoes. Well, we had another one come down last night, and I got some pretty good captures this time.

ipcamtalk.com

 

[sdkid]

Because of the distance "low light" isn't really needed as you can run default settings.

I put together a sky/roof rig with (4) 180* Color4K cams...

I decided I wanted to see ALL of the things... After some posts on here about weather and watching the sky, and wishing I would have had my own, better footage when a meteorite came down a few months ago..., I figured I would put together my own sky cam rig. And, because I can't just do things...

ipcamtalk.com

Thanks for posting that one-- I had never seen it until you posted the link. If a person sticks around here long enough, you tend to learn a thing or two...

 

[sdkid]

Currently....

 

[Techie007L]

Not sure where exactly to post this thread so I'll dump it here in chit-chat. I've been toying with the idea of catching meteorites on camera. In late March, we had a daytime meteorite that produced a sonic boom in Ohio, and a few nights ago there was another high profile visible fireball in the sky that produced no noise.

My question for the brain trust here is: Do I need to homebrew some kind of camera like a Sony IMX 585 sensor and find a wide angle lens and a camera dome that will work for me or is there something available commercially out there that I can open a box, mount pointed to the sky and not have to think about again? After some research it appears that a lot of the Starvis/2/3 sensors end up in dashcams but I get the feeling that if I were to pluck a sensor directly out of one (probably build on a custom backplane w/o PoE availability) it won't do me much good at all. I also don't want USB2/3 as my transmission means. PoE or bust.

I don't care about feeding to meteor networks, and I don't care about anything other than the recordings I get off the camera. I feel like its irrelevant but I'll be dumping this video into an Avigilon Unity 8 system. I understand the market for such a camera is VERRRRRYYYYYY small so if I need to build something then so be it, I'm not afraid to do so but I also like opening boxes and going the "happy and stupid" route sometimes too.

The best sky camera around here is the EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-T hands-down. It has a large (1/1.2") 4K Sony IMX485 sensor that will give you the best combination of resolution and framerate without lots of noise like most other cameras would exhibit. It is IP67 rated, so you can just put it outside and point it at the sky—no waterproofing necessary. I've had one pointed at the sky for a couple years now and it's still working great (example image included below). I would recommend covering the Ethernet junction coming out of the camera as that plastic housing falls apart in sunlight (the cable and camera seem to be doing just fine). Also be sure to get a white unit—black ones will most likely overheat during the day out in the sun.




I would not recommend the T180 for this purpose; the only thing remarkable about that camera is that it has two lenses/sensors that it stitches together as one super-wide (180°) image (with plenty of distortion+digital warping), while giving you only 48° of vertical resolution—making it hard to cover most of the sky without significant overlap. Plus its nighttime performance and resolution are inferior to the Color4K-T camera I linked above.