BRAMS: Belgian RAdio Meteor Stations

BRAMS Newsfeed

Workshop FRIPON/BRAMS at BISA

On Thursday 30 January 2014, we had the pleasure to welcome our French colleagues from IMCCE (Paris, France) at BISA : François Colas presented the French optical network FRIPON (Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network) while Jérémie Vaubaillon presented CABERNET (The CAmera for BEtter Resolution NETwork). The presentation of FRIPON can be downloaded here. Some technical details about the FRIPON cameras can be found here. The afternoon was devoted to radar observations. The status and recent developments of BRAMS were presented. The presentation can be downloaded here. Jean-Louis Rault finally presented a comparison of meteor observations with analog and digital (SDR) receivers. You can also download his presentation. The goal of the workshop was to discuss about the complementarity of the BRAMS and FRIPON networks and to see how FRIPON can be extended to Belgium. It has been decided to add a few fish-eye cameras in Belgium under the responsability of BISA. The first camera will be located in Uccle. Other places will be University of Liège and Centre de Géophysique du Globe in Dourbes.

New BRAMS station in Seneffe

A new BRAMS station has been set up in Seneffe. Thanks to David Erzeel and Patrick Mertens for taking care of the local installation. Thanks to IBPT for hosting the station.

News about the interferometer in Humain

Finally, works in Humain have re-started again. The tranches have been done and cables will soon be added to connect the 5 antennas to the receivers which will now be located in a small container (instead of a much smaller box as was planned before). The container can be seen in one of the images below. Next step is to install electrical power and internet access through an optical fiber and we will be able to start the initial tests.

Solar flares in BRAMS data

While designed for the detection of meteor echoes, the BRAMS stations are also sensitive to solar flares, at least when their intensity is large enough and/or when the Sun is located within the main lobe of the antenna. Recently a student from ULB has made an internship at BISA and worked on the detection of solar flares with BRAMS data. Below is a very recent exemple of solar flare observed at BEUCCL on 22/04/2013 and the corresponding spectrogram observed at Humain by the Callisto spectrograph from the Royal Observatory (see data at www.sidc.be/humain). The structure of the solar flare is clearly visible in our BRAMS data.

Some Lyrids meteors observed at BEUCCL

Below are some spectacular echoes observed at BEUCCL during the Lyrids 2013. The first spectrogram on the left hand side shows a beautiful "epsilon echo" with multiple branches. On the brightest echo from the spectrogram on the right, a clear head echo can be seen before a long and intense overdense echo. The spectrogram on the 2nd row shows another very bright overdense echo with a complex turbulent structure.

New BRAMS station installed in Gent

On 22/04/2013, a new BRAMS station has been successfully installed in Gent on the Armand Pien Observatory located on the University campus. Thanks to Guy Wauters and collaborators for helping us install and to host the BRAMS station.

Spectacular signature of the re-entry of the upper stage of Soyousz with BRAMS

On 13 February around 21h15 UT, the upper stage of a recent Soyousz has re-entered Earth's atmosphere passing above Belgium and Germany giving rise to a spectacular optical phenomenom (see testimonies e.g. here). The object and the strong ionization left behind it are clearly visible in BRAMS data. Here are examples of spectrograms recorded in Uccle : On the right image, the frequency range has been increased to show the "head echo" due to the reflection of radio waves on an ionized region in front of the moving object. The Soyousz upper stage was moving at around 7 km/s producing a strong Doppler effect visible on the image.

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