A time-domain deconvolution technique for meteor photometry applied to double-station CCD image data

¹ Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, UK
e-mail: aac@arm.ac.uk
² Technische Universität Berlin, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Anastasios.Margonis@tu-berlin.de
³ German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Rutherfordstrasse 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: Juergen.Oberst@dlr.de
⁴ Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK), Gorokhovsky pereulok 4, 105064 Moscow, Russian Federation

Received: 23 April 2015
Accepted: 13 July 2015

Abstract

Aims. We describe a new algorithm for extracting photometric information from meteor images.

Methods. The time history of a moving point source of variable brightness is explicitly deconvolved from the spatial distribution of the meteor signal on the image. The method can be applied to time-integrated meteor images if kinematic information is independently available or, alternatively, assumed. Formal uncertainty estimation and reporting is included.

Results. We test the algorithm on synthetic meteor images and meteors recorded during a recent double-station meteor observing campaign in Greece. In the first case, we find that both the synthetic signal and the a priori time variation of the flux are faithfully reproduced. In the second, the fluxes obtained from the two stations agree to ∼20%.