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
The current IMO Visual Handbook has been the standard reference for meteor observations for many years, but has been out of print for quite a while now. Some of the information in it had become obsolete or outdated, and the Handbook needed seriously updating. From the idea of refreshing the Visual Handbook grew the concept of extending it to cover other techniques that have become popular and more affordable over time as well. It will still be some time before the new Handbook hits the shelves, but it is actively being worked on by the various IMO Commissions right now.
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. Items submitted are then 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 so far has been primarily in the IMO's journal WGN, but online versions of many of the articles are now available, and a CD-ROM with all the published articles through to the end of 2007 is now available. 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, and both aspects continue.
[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.