Abstract: A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux network during the month of July 2021 is presented. July 2021 allowed to obtain meteor orbits during 28 nights resulting in 7125 multiple station meteors, with a total number for July 2021 of 2525 orbits. A maximum of 81 cameras was operational at 27 camera stations during this month.
1 Introduction
Although a summer month, the weather in July is often unfavorable for astronomy in the BeNeLux area. The short nights with only about 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. So far, July 2018, 2019 and 2020 were all excellent months of July for our CAMS network, would July 2021 become another successful month of July?
2 July 2021 statistics
CAMS BeNeLux collected 7125 multi-station meteors, good for 2525 orbits (against 12834 multi-station meteors and 3823 orbits in July 2020). This is much less than previous 3 years and the poorest result for July since 2016.
July 2018 and 2019 had more than half of all July nights with almost completely clear nights for the network, July 2020 had about half of its nights with unfavorable weather and July 2021 got only few complete clear nights. Three nights ended without any single orbit, just like previous year, 11 nights had more than 100 orbits (14 in 2020 and 17 in 2019), only 2 nights had more than 200 orbits (6 in 2020, 9 in 2019). July 29–30 was the most successful night with 285 orbits, much less than the record July night of 30–31 July 2020 with 542 orbits or July 29–30 in 2019 with 504 orbits. The statistics of July 2021 are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1 with the same month in previous years since the start of CAMS BeNeLux in 2012. In 10 years, 247 July nights allowed to obtain orbits with a grand total of 20988 orbits collected during this month in all these years.
The BeNeLux CAMS network had its last major expansion in the summer of 2017 and since then every now and then some new cameras were added. No new cameras were added in July 2021, but as many 25 cameras at several CAMS stations in the Netherlands and Germany were not available for various reasons in July 2021. It remains a challenge to keep all the hardware operational and people motivated. In a video camera network, the success of each participant depends on the availability and goodwill of all others involved in order to obtain multi-station events. When a number of camera locations have no cameras running, this reduces the number of paired meteors. Since AutoCAMS got applied at most camera stations, the practice of running cameras only occasionally on nights with clear sky got limited to four of the CAMS stations.
Figure 1 – Comparing July 2021 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 capturing in a single night and the yellow bar the average number of cameras capturing per night.
Table 1 – July 2021 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 |
| 2020 | 28 | 3823 | 24 | 90 | 59 | 79.1 |
| 2021 | 28 | 2525 | 27 | 81 | 55 | 67.3 |
| Total | 247 | 20988 |
3 Conclusion
A combination of unfavorable weather circumstances with less operational cameras explains why this month was the least successful month of July since 2016. Considering the poor weather and the availability of less cameras, the total of 2525 orbits is still a very good result in these circumstances.
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. The CAMS BeNeLux team was operated by the following volunteers during July 2021:
Hans Betlem (Winterswijk, CAMS 3071, 3072 and 3073), Felix Bettonvil (Utrecht, Netherlands, CAMS 376 and 377), Jean-Marie Biets (Wilderen, Belgium, CAMS 379, 380, 381 and 382), Ludger Boergerding (Holdorf, Germany, RMS 3801), Martin Breukers (Hengelo, Netherlands, CAMS 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 and 327), Guiseppe Canonaco (Genk, RMS 3815), Pierre de Ponthiere (Lesve, Belgium, RMS 3816), Bart Dessoy (Zoersel, Belgium, CAMS 397, 398, 804, 805, 806 and 3888), Tammo Jan Dijkema (Eelderwolde, Netherlands, RMS 3198, Dwingeloo, Netherlands, RMS 3199), Jean-Paul Dumoulin, Dominique Guiot and Christian Walin (Grapfontaine, Belgium, CAMS 814 and 815, RMS 3814), Uwe Glässner (Langenfeld, Germany, RMS 3800), Luc Gobin (Mechelen, Belgium, CAMS 3890, 3891, 3892 and 3893), Tioga Gulon (Nancy, France, CAMS 3900 and 3901), Robert Haas (Alphen aan de Rijn, Netherlands, CAMS 3160, 3161, 3162, 3163, 3164, 3165, 3166 and 3167), Robert Haas (Texel, Netherlands, CAMS 811, 812 and 813), Kees Habraken (Kattendijke, Netherlands, RMS 378), Klaas Jobse (Oostkapelle, Netherlands, CAMS 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3035, 3036 and 3037), Carl Johannink (Gronau, Germany, CAMS 3001, 3002, 3003, 3004, 3005, 3006, 3007, 3008, 3009 and 3010), Reinhard Kühn (Flatzby, Germany, RMS 3802), Hervé Lamy (Dourbes, Belgium, CAMS 394 and 395), Hervé Lamy (Humain Belgium, CAMS 816), Hervé Lamy (Ukkel, Belgium, CAMS 393), Tim Polfliet (Gent, Belgium, CAMS 396), Steve Rau (Zillebeke, Belgium, CAMS 3850 and 3852), Paul and Adriana Roggemans (Mechelen, Belgium, RMS 3830 and 3831, CAMS 3832, 3833, 3834, 3835, 3836 and 3837), Hans Schremmer (Niederkruechten, Germany, CAMS 803) and Erwin van Ballegoij (Heesch, Netherlands, CAMS 348).
