A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux network during the month of July 2019 is presented. July 2019 offered exceptional many clear nights resulting in 13243 multiple station meteors, with a new record number for the month of July of 4139 orbits obtained by the network.
1 Introduction
During the first seven years of the CAMS BeNeLux network the month of July often proved rather unfavorable for astronomical observations. The still short nights with only 5 to 6 hours of observing time are easily ruined by bad weather. The overall meteor activity increases significantly during this month with some well-established showers late July while Perseid activity becomes clearly visible. Until now, July 2018 was the best month of July for our CAMS network, what would July 2019 bring?
2 July 2019 statistics
CAMS BeNeLux collected 13243 multi-station meteors, good for 4139 orbits. These are the best results ever for a month of July.
July 2019 offered the same number of nights with clear sky as July 2018. More than half of all July nights were almost completely clear nights for the network, with most of the other nights offering reasonable chances to collect multiple station meteors under partial clear sky. All nights allowed to register meteors except 13–14 July, that night was too bad to have any single orbit. 17 nights had more than 100 orbits, 9 nights had more than 200 orbits. July 29–30 was most successful with as many as 504 orbits, a record so far for a July night. The statistics of July 2019 are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1 with the same month in previous years since the start of CAMS BeNeLux in 2012. In 8 years, 191 July nights allowed to obtain orbits with a grand total of 14640 orbits collected during this month in all these years.
The CAMS network suffered significant less technical problems than last year. Some cameras were temporary unavailable due to malfunctioning framegrabbers (EzCap) and some data was lost due to a phenomenon that we call “shuttered meteors”, fragments of detected meteors that fail to get recorded resulting in an incorrect duration and therefore erroneous velocity determination. It is not clear what caused this relative new phenomenon which occurs at stations that got a more recent version of CAMS.
BeNeLux CAMS network had a last major expansion in 2017. Unfortunately, the strategic important CAMS station Ooltgenplaat quit in June 2018 after fire damage. Finally, some more new cameras were added to the network. Jean-Marie Biets added a new camera (379) at Wilderen, Belgium. Adriana and Paul Roggemans, with the help of Guiseppe Canonaco and Denis Vida installed another RMS on the building of Cosmodrome in Genk, Belgium, while the existing new RMS cameras 3830 in Mechelen and especially the 3814 in Grapfontaine, Belgium, continued to provide plenty of multiple station data with a top score of 839 orbits in Grapfontaine!
Figure 1 – Comparing July 2019 to previous months of July in the CAMS BeNeLux history. The blue bars represent the number of orbits, the red bars the maximum number of cameras running in a single night and the yellow bar the average number of cameras running per night.
Table 1 – July 2019 compared to previous months of July.
| Year | Nights | Orbits | Stations | Max. Cams | Min. Cams | Mean Cams |
| 2012 | 7 | 49 | 4 | 4 | – | 2.6 |
| 2013 | 22 | 484 | 10 | 18 | – | 12.9 |
| 2014 | 19 | 830 | 14 | 30 | – | 22.0 |
| 2015 | 28 | 976 | 15 | 43 | – | 26.7 |
| 2016 | 28 | 1420 | 18 | 50 | 10 | 37.9 |
| 2017 | 27 | 2644 | 20 | 63 | 30 | 51.6 |
| 2018 | 30 | 4098 | 19 | 72 | 59 | 67.7 |
| 2019 | 30 | 4139 | 21 | 86 | 63 | 75.2 |
| Total | 191 | 14640 |
Altogether at best 86 cameras were available this month, 63 of which functioned all nights thanks to AutoCams. On average 87% of all operational cameras were active, against 94% one year ago.
The few new RMS cameras installed in Genk, Grapfontaine and Mechelen contributed large numbers of multiple station events. The coverage of the atmosphere over Belgium improved tremendously, especially the south-eastern part and Luxembourg. With all stations in Belgium functioning 7/7 with AutoCams, the region of interest to have common events between the video data of CAMS and the radio echoes of BRAMS improved a lot. Table 2 lists the 20 best performing cameras in the network in terms of orbits. The monster scores of the RMS cameras are remarkable, taking into account that the 3815 and 3830 functioned less nights than most other cameras. Although the scores are good in terms of orbits and the quality of the orbits proves to be very good, still the RMS cameras suffer too often technical problems, either due to the RPi or due to network problems.
Table 2 – Comparing RMS cameras among the twenty cameras of the CAMS BeNeLux network with the best score in terms of orbits during July 2019.
| Camera | Total orbits | Total nights |
| 003814 (RMS, Grapfontaine, BE) | 839 | 31 |
| 003830 (RMS, Mechelen, BE) | 353 | 18 |
| 003900 (Watec, Nancy, FR) | 332 | 31 |
| 000384 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 290 | 31 |
| 000394 (Watec, Dourbes, BE) | 280 | 31 |
| 000399 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 278 | 31 |
| 000391 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 274 | 31 |
| 000395 (Watec, Dourbes, BE) | 274 | 31 |
| 003815 (RMS, Genk, BE) | 268 | 13 |
| 000383 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 259 | 31 |
| 000814 (Watec, Grapfontaine, BE) | 251 | 30 |
| 000809 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 242 | 31 |
| 000815 (Watec, Grapfontaine, BE) | 225 | 30 |
| 000390 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 218 | 31 |
| 000388 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 215 | 31 |
| 000393 (Watec, Ukkel, BE) | 214 | 31 |
| 000816 (Watec, Humain, BE) | 201 | 31 |
| 000806 (Watec, Zoersel, BE) | 192 | 31 |
| 003035 (Watec, Oostkapelle, NL) | 187 | 19 |
| 000805 (Watec, Zoersel, BE) | 187 | 31 |
3 Conclusion
July 2019 became the most successful month of July in the CAMS BeNeLux history as it performed slightly better than July last year.
Acknowledgment
Many thanks to all participants in the CAMS BeNeLux network for their dedicated efforts. The data on which this report is based has been taken from the CAMS website (http://cams.seti.org/FDL/index-BeNeLux.html). The CAMS BeNeLux team is operated by the following volunteers:
Hans Betlem (Leiden, Netherlands, CAMS 371, 372 and 373), Jean-Marie Biets (Wilderen, Belgium, CAMS 379, 380, 381 and 382), Martin Breukers (Hengelo, Netherlands, CAMS 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 and 327, RMS 328 and 329), Guiseppe Canonaco (Genk, RMS 3815), Bart Dessoy (Zoersel, Belgium, CAMS 397, 398, 804, 805, 806 and 888), Jean-Paul Dumoulin and Christian Walin (Grapfontaine, Belgium, CAMS 814 and 815, RMS 003814), Luc Gobin (Mechelen, Belgium, CAMS 390, 391, 807 and 808), Tioga Gulon (Nancy, France, CAMS 3900 and 3901), Robert Haas (Alphen aan de Rijn, Netherlands, CAMS 3360, 3361, 3362, 3363, 3364, 3365, 3366 and 3367), Robert Haas (Texel, Netherlands, CAMS 810, 811, 812 and 813), Robert Haas / Edwin van Dijk (Burlage, Germany, CAMS 801, 802, 821 and 822), Klaas Jobse (Oostkapelle, Netherlands, CAMS 3030, 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3037, 3038 and 3039) , Carl Johannink (Gronau, Germany, CAMS 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317 and 318), Hervé Lamy (Dourbes, Belgium, CAMS 394 and 395), Hervé Lamy (Humain Belgium, CAMS 816), Hervé Lamy (Ukkel, Belgium, CAMS 393), Koen Miskotte (Ermelo, Netherlands, CAMS 351, 352, 353 and 354), Tim Polfliet (Gent, Belgium, CAMS 396), Steve Rau (Zillebeke, Belgium, CAMS 3850 and 3852), Paul and Adriana Roggemans (Mechelen, Belgium, CAMS 383, 384, 388, 389, 399 and 809, RMS 003830), Hans Schremmer (Niederkruechten, Germany, CAMS 803) and Erwin van Ballegoij (Heesch, Netherlands,CAMS 347 and 348).
