A double-station meteor camera setup in the Canary Islands – CILBO

Abstract. Meteors are caused by dust particles in the solar system which enter the Earth's atmosphere. Using double-station camera setups, the precise trajectory of these dust particles can be determined. The initial heliocentric orbits of the dust can be derived and valuable information about their distribution, velocities, and composition can be determined. This paper describes a double-station camera setup in the Canary Islands, called CILBO (Canary Island Long-Baseline Observatory). It makes use of automated roll-off roofs to house one camera on Tenerife, one on La Palma, monitoring the same volume of the atmosphere. From the obtained data, the meteoroid trajectory can be computed. A second camera on Tenerife is equipped with an objective grating. For bright meteors, a spectrum is recorded which allows to constrain the chemical composition of the meteor. The system is completely automated and sends the obtained data after every observing night to a central ftp server. It has been in operation for almost two years and the first scientific results are produced.