Meteors that enter the atmosphere have ionisation trails of excited molecules that we observe as bright streaks. Those ionised areas are more reflective to radio waves and it is this characteristic that can be used to detect a meteor at any time of day.
Using radio these meteors can be broadcast as distinct and unique audible pings. There are two methods that can be used, back-scatter (radar) method, the transmitter and receiver are located together and there is forward-scatter where the signal is reflected forward to the receiver, which is located many kilometres from the transmitter. It is the forward scatter method that we use and can be set up with some simple equipment.
The graphics below are example meteor detections that have been recorded from our home radio meteor detector. To view the recent data please visit the Live data feed.
The number of meteors are automatically compiled into the heat plots below using a program called colorgramme. The day of the month follows across the X axis with the hour in UT plotted on the Y axis. For each hour of a given date the number of meteors are displayed as a colour. The furthest column indicates the colours assigned to different numbers.
This graphical representation allows you to quickly see at what time and date an increase in the number of detections was observed. This is of course important as we start to approach meteor shower peaks as these should be easily determined on the heat plots if you have a reliable set up without too many false detections.
The data collected is uploaded hourly to the Radio Meteor Observing Bulletin (www.RMOB.org)