Abstract: A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux network during the month of June 2022 is presented. 14179 meteors were registered of which 7739 multiple-station events, resulting in 2228 orbits. June 2022 was the second best month of June in the 11 years of the network.
Introduction
The first weeks of June display very low meteor activity while we get the shortest nights of the year with between 7 hours and less than 6 hours of capture time. Therefore, no spectacular numbers of orbits are to be expected. Collecting orbits under these circumstances remains a challenge. What did June 2022 bring us?
June 2022 statistics
June is the most difficult month for CAMS BeNeLux because of the short observing window of barely 5 to 6 hours dark sky each night. June 2022 was an exceptionally favorable month for astronomy with many clear nights and nights with partial clear sky. 14179 meteors were registered, 7739 of which were multi-station events good for 2228 orbits. Not a single night remained without any orbits (8 without orbits in June 2021, 3 in June 2020). Ten nights resulted in more than 100 orbits in spite of the short duration of these nights (3 in June 2021, 8 in June 2020). This is an excellent result but not as good as in 2019 when 13 nights had more than 100 orbits and two nights had even more than 200 orbits. The best night for June 2022 was June 27–28 with 182 orbits. The statistics for June 2022 are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1 with the same month in previous years since the start of CAMS BeNeLux in 2012.
Table 1 – June 2022 compared to previous months of June.
| Year | Nights | Orbits | Stations | Max. Cams | Min. Cams | Mean Cams |
| 2012 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | – | 0.0 |
| 2013 | 16 | 102 | 9 | 12 | – | 7.0 |
| 2014 | 23 | 379 | 13 | 31 | – | 19.0 |
| 2015 | 20 | 779 | 15 | 44 | – | 32.9 |
| 2016 | 18 | 345 | 17 | 50 | 15 | 35.7 |
| 2017 | 26 | 1536 | 19 | 66 | 30 | 52.1 |
| 2018 | 28 | 1425 | 21 | 78 | 52 | 64.9 |
| 2019 | 28 | 2457 | 20 | 84 | 63 | 75.6 |
| 2020 | 27 | 1834 | 24 | 93 | 60 | 83.1 |
| 2021 | 22 | 1389 | 26 | 81 | 54 | 73.3 |
| 2022 | 30 | 2228 | 30 | 94 | 74 | 85.2 |
| Total | 238 | 12474 |
Figure 1 – Comparing June 2022 to previous months of June 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 green bar the average number of cameras running per night.
During the best nights 94 cameras were operational (81 in June 2021 and 93 in 2020). Thanks to AutoCAMS for Watecs and the fully automated RMS cameras, at least 74 cameras were all nights operational (54 in 2021 and 60 in 2020). On average 85.2 of all available cameras were active, which is much better than the 73.3 of last year.
A new 6mm RMS camera (3824) got operational at the observatory “De Polderster” at Boekhoute on 11 June. Unfortunately, 8 nights later a local problem with the electric power made its sd-card crash as well as that of its twin RMS camera (3823) which was already operational since April. A British 4mm RMS camera (UK0004) operated by Jim Rowe in Eastbourne started to deliver data to CAMS BeNeLux since 21 June with CAMS id 3829.
The total number of orbits collected for the month of June since 2012 reached 12474 in 238 nights of June that allowed to collect orbits. This way the month of June remains the poorest month of the year in number of orbits collected for CAMS BeNeLux, mainly because of the short duration nights. But it isn’t bad when compared to January for which we got 13083 orbits collected in spite of much longer nights and more rich meteor activity. So far, June counts already 7 calendar nights with more 500 orbits collected.
Table 2 – The twenty cameras of the CAMS BeNeLux network with the best score in terms of orbits during the month of June 2022, with the scores within GMN for the RMS cameras.
| Camera | Total orbitsCAMS |
Total
orbits GMN |
Total nights |
| Dourbes (RMS 003825) | 282 | 294 | 30 |
| Humain (RMS 003821) | 280 | 270 | 30 |
| Lesve (RMS 003826) | 253 | 190 | 30 |
| Grapfontaine (RMS 003814) | 200 | 132 | 30 |
| Lesve (RMS 003816) | 180 | 117 | 30 |
| Zillebeke (RMS 003853) | 176 | 101 | 30 |
| Zillebeke (RMS 003851) | 151 | 106 | 30 |
| Grapfontaine (RMS 003817) | 148 | 174 | 30 |
| Zoersel (RMS 003827) | 140 | 116 | 30 |
| Mechelen (003837) | 134 | – | 30 |
| Genk (RMS 003818) | 130 | 76 | 30 |
| Mechelen (003891) | 130 | – | 29 |
| Zoersel (000805) | 128 | – | 30 |
| Zoersel (000806) | 123 | – | 30 |
| Wilderen (000380) | 120 | – | 30 |
| Genk (RMS 003819) | 119 | 146 | 30 |
| Grapfontaine (000814) | 116 | – | 29 |
| Grapfontaine (000815) | 116 | – | 29 |
| Mechelen (003834) | 116 | – | 30 |
| Mechelen (RMS 003831) | 115 | 83 | 30 |
With comparable weather in 2022, we concluded June with about 10% less orbits than in 2019 although we had 10 cameras more than in 2019. The most likely explanation for this is that since a while the CAMS trajectory solver, Coincidence, rejects all meteors detected lower than 25° above the horizon. The reason for this blind cut-off is to reduce the number of poor triangulations due to large distances between the cameras and meteors although this also rejects the good triangulations at lower altitude. With the RMS cameras we see that the GMN trajectory solver in general rejects more combinations than CAMS but still has a reasonable number of good quality triangulations at lower than 25° elevation. Since the CAMS trajectory solver is less advanced than that of GMN, it was decided to reject all low altitude meteors as CAMS cannot handle these properly.
The Belgian part of the network got 10 new RMS cameras installed since summer 2021 to improve the coverage on this region. Looking at the scores in terms of orbits for all cameras, the RMS cameras outnumber the Watecs in numbers of paired meteors (see Table 2). With a larger field of view, better astrometric calibration and a superior detection algorithm, the RMS cameras are a real game changer. The scores in the GMN for the RMS cameras are listed in Table 2 for comparison. CAMS Watec data is not accepted by GMN because the quality does not meet the GMN standards. With about half of the Dutch camera stations not functioning each night, the epicentrum of the network moved south. The June 2022 trajectories can be visualized on MeteorMap.
Conclusion
June 2022 was an excellent month for CAMS BeNeLux with the second-best score in number of orbits after 2019.
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 June 2022:
Hans Betlem (Woold, CAMS 3071, 3072 and 3073), Jean-Marie Biets (Wilderen, Belgium, CAMS 379, 380, 381 and 382), Ludger Boergerding (Holdorf, Germany, RMS 3801), Günther Boerjan (Assenede, Belgium, RMS 3823 and 3824), Martin Breukers (Hengelo, Netherlands, CAMS 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 and 327, RMS 319, 328 and 329), Seppe Canonaco (Genk, RMS 3818, RMS 3819), Pierre de Ponthiere (Lesve, Belgium, RMS 3816 and 3826), Bart Dessoy (Zoersel, Belgium, CAMS 397, 398, 804, 805, 806, 888 and RMS 3827), Tammo Jan Dijkema (Dwingeloo, Netherlands, RMS 3199), Isabelle Ansseau, Jean-Paul Dumoulin, Dominique Guiot and Christian Walin (Grapfontaine, Belgium, CAMS 814 and 815, RMS 3814, RMS 3817), 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 810,811, 812, 813), Robert Haas (Burlage, Germany, RMS 3803, 3804), Kees Habraken (Kattendijke, Netherlands, RMS 378), Klaas Jobse (Oostkapelle, Netherlands, CAMS 3030, 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3035, 3036 and 3037), Carl Johannink (Gronau, Germany, CAMS 3100, 3101, 3102, 3103 and 3104), Reinhard Kühn (Flatzby, Germany, RMS 3802), Hervé Lamy (Dourbes, Belgium, CAMS 394 and 395, RMS 3825), Hervé Lamy (Humain Belgium, CAMS 816, RMS 3821), Hervé Lamy (Ukkel, Belgium, CAMS 393), Jos Nijland (Terschelling, Netherlands, CAMS 841, 842, 844), Tim Polfliet (Gent, Belgium, CAMS 396, RMS 3820), Steve Rau (Zillebeke, Belgium, CAMS 3850, 3852, RMS 3851, RMS 3853), Paul and Adriana Roggemans (Mechelen, Belgium, RMS 3830 and 3831, CAMS 3832, 3833, 3834, 3835, 3836 and 3837), Jim Rowe (Eastbourne, UK, RMS 3829), Hans Schremmer (Niederkruechten, Germany, CAMS 803), Erwin van Ballegoij (Heesch, Netherlands, CAMS 3148).
