Canopus (Alpha Carinae) is the second brightest star visible in the night sky. Everybody knows about Sirius and Arcturus – the first and third brightest stars, but how many of you have seen Canopus? At a declination of nearly 53 degrees south of the celestial equator, Canopus is not visible from latitudes above 37°18’ north, which excludes almost all of Europe, and half the continental United States and all of Canada. In locations where it is visible, Canopus and Sirius make a grand winter sight, as they do in all the summertime southern hemisphere.
Canopus Observatory is located in Malta (latitude 35.9 degrees north).
Visual setup:
C14 EdgeHD
Radio astronomy observation setup:
The main aim is the radio observation of meteors and the goals of this project are shared with those of the Belgian radio meteor project (BRAMS) and are:
- To write code for automatic detection of underdense/overdense meteor echoes.
- To compute meteoroid flux densities for meteor showers and mass indexes for meteor showers and sporadic meteors.
- To determine individual meteor trajectories from observations of the same meteor by multiple stations (both shower meteors and sporadic ones)
- To determine orbital parameters of multi-station meteoroids
- To analyse meteor profiles in order to retrieve physical parameters such as ionization, speed and mass of the meteoroids
- To study head echoes and the so-called “epsilon” echoes
- To promote radio-observation of meteors.
NIGHT SKY MUSINGS...TAĦT SEMA KWIEKEB 