International Meteor Organization
Ongoing Projects
Within the international meteor community there is always a lot of action, with people from around the world working on all kinds of meteor-related projects. This page aims at encouraging people to contribute to existing projects or even start new ones. Basically, this page tries to summarize something of what's going on. Remark that the projects on this page are not necessarily run by the IMO, we just give an overview.
It doesn't matter if you're an amateur or a pro, if you're working on something meteoric yourself, don't hesitate to contact the webmaster and claim your own spot here! Please include a short description of your project (one paragraph) to go on the this page, and optionally a more elaborate explanation that could be linked from this page.
If you're interested in one of the projects already listed here, you should definitely get in touch with the people involved; their contact details are always provided.
IMO Meteor Observation Handbook
Thirteen years after the IMO's "Handbook for Visual Meteor Observers" (1995), a new "Handbook for Meteor Observations" was published. As the title says, the 1995 handbook was devoted to visual meteor observations. The IMO's "Photographic Handbook" was sold out for many years as well, and there were requests for instructions to other observing techniques, too. Therefore the 2008 "Handbook for Meteor Observations" covers the visual, photographic, video, telescopic and radio observation of meteors. It also includes - as the 1995 handbook did - a description of the meteor showers currently included in the IMO's Working List, with a concentration to the recent observations and up-to-date activity information.
Thanks to the contribution of numerous authors, this broad spectrum of topics was collected and updated. Of course, meteor astronomy - observations as well as theoretical work - will produce new results and insights. Hence we plan to work on the texts on a continuous base with the aim to publish updated and revised new editions. In the 2009 edition, we have included some minor changes, a few updates and corrections of typos which went into the 2008 edition. You are invited to contribute to future versions by sending comments on the current texts and figures or to write texts/produce figures. Of course, we also try to keep the information provided in the Handbook, the annual Meteor Shower Calendar and on the IMO web pages consistent. Finally, we cross-check the data with those provided by the IAU Meteor Data Center.
[Contact: Juergen Rendtel] [Get the handbook]
Meteor Beliefs Project
Established during the second half of 2002, the Meteor Beliefs Project was announced in early 2003. Its purpose is quite simple in essence, but potentially far-reaching and open-ended in practice. What we would like is that anyone with information to share should contact us with their favourite literary, poetic, mythological or folkloric references to meteors. At the end of 2005, we introduced a new strand, "Meteoric Imagery in SF", to feature meteoric objects as portrayed in films and TV programmes. At the same time, we also began collecting notes on meteor-related contemporary song lyrics, a strand we call "Musical Meteors", and both aspects continue. Items submitted are either re-edited as elements of compilation articles, or presented in longer pieces in a suitable format under the authorship of the contributor or in collaboration with the Project coordinators, and under the general Meteor Beliefs Project banner. All contributors are fully acknowledged, whatever the case. Publication was primarily in the IMO's journal WGN until the end of 2007, but the 2008 material was presented instead to the International Meteor Conference in Sachticka, Slovakia, with the full article texts expected to be published in the IMC Proceedings in due course. Online versions of many of the earlier WGN articles are available, and a CD-ROM containing PDF versions of all the published articles to the end of 2007, plus preprints of the 2008 papers, can be bought at the IMO's online shop for 4 Euros or 6 US Dollars.
[Contact: Alastair McBeath] [More info]
Virtual Meteor Observatory
Meteor observations are commonly analyzed through statistical techniques. Therefore, it is not surprising that the IMO, since its formation in 1988, has paid much attention to the creation of databases where a maximal number of meteor observations can be gathered. An ongoing effort is to establish a central informatics platform for the meteor science community, called the Virtual Meteor Observatory (VMO). The VMO will provide online access to data resources from different institutions, groups and observing projects. This will allow for new research and more comprehensive analyses.