Perseids and the UK Meteor Radar Project

The UK Meteor Beacon has been operational since May 2022 enabling anyone with a suitable receiver to detect and study radio echoes from meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere over a large part of the UK. The Beacon Transmitter is located at the Sherwood Observatory of the Mansfield and Sutton Astronomical Society.

The second phase of this project has been to establish a network of receivers accessible via the internet for anyone to study meteors without the need for their own dedicated receiver. “The UK Meteor Radar Project” is a Bi-Static radar to study meteors.

Receivers in the network stream their data to a central server which users can access. Up to 6 receivers are displayed at https://ukmeteorbeacon.org/beaconclient/ . Details of how to use the display can be found at the project web site:- https://ukmeteorbeacon.org/Home see “Observing GB3MBA” and the live displays are explained at https://ukmeteorbeacon.org/Documents2List . Select “Using the Live Streams”.

We aim to maintain the live stream at https://ukmeteorbeacon.org/beaconclient/ 24/7 and during the Perseids this August we will provide an additional stream which has greater bandwidth and includes sound. This can be viewed at https://batc.org.uk/live/gb3mba. Again the “Using the Live Streams” document explains the display.

Individuals or societies observing the Perseids will find these live streams of radio echoes a useful addition to their optical observations. The radio echoes can be viewed by day and night and in all weather conditions.