International Meteor Organization
Meteor-related Software
Various software packages are available related to meteors and meteor data processing.
Radiant
The Radiant software calculates density distributions of meteor radiants. The input procedures interpret meteor co-ordinate data in the PosDat and FIDAC formats. The user should have some basic knowledge of creating dBase files. The density distributions are gnomonically projected, thus simplifying the calculating procedures. For most radiant searches the investigated area is small enough (less than twenty degrees across) that the scale changes over this "gnomonic chart" can be neglected. Radiant knows three methods of radiant determinations: backward tracings, intersection counts and probability distributions.
Download Radiant (author Rainer Arlt)
MetRec
MetRec (Meteor Recognizer) is a software package for the automatic detection and analysis of video meteors. It can be used both to inspect video tapes offline, and to do online recognition for an automatic video meteor camera.
Download MetRec (author Sirko Molau)
QRicht
QRicht provides you with all required information to aim your cameras for double-station observations based on the observation time, the geographic coordinates of 2, 3 or 4 stations, the height in the atmosphere of the aiming point and the geographic coordinates of the aiming point in the atmosphere.
Download QRicht (author Marc de Lignie)
VisDat
VISDAT is a system for recording and evaluating visual meteor observations. The first version was developed in 1991 by Thomas Rattei and later by Janko F. Richter (both Astroclub Radebeul e.V. Germany).
Download VisDat (author Janko F. Richter/T. Rattei)
AstroRecord
The Astro Record program is aimed at making position measurements of celestial objects, especially meteors, and performing the associate astrometric calculations. For this purpose screen coordinates of the object and of a number of reference stars can be measured, equatorial coordinates of the reference stars can be looked up, and the results of the astrometric calculations can be analyzed regarding wrong star identifications and plate defects.
Download AstroRecord (author Marc de Lignie)
MetShow
A new version of MetShow is running in all contemporary windows operating systems. The program can help meteor observers to prepare and evaluate their observations. MetShow is based on the IMO Working List of Meteor Showers. It can work either with the new list according to the 2011 calendar or with the older list from 2006. The software produces the following information for the active showers on a given date:
- star charts with radiants
- moon phase
- moonrise and moonset
- sunrise and sunset
- solar longitude (J2000)
- other astronomical circumstances
- ZHR calculation
- Lunar impact conditions
Download MetShow (author Peter Zimnikoval)
Radio Meteor Software
Yagimax
This program permits the calculation of the performance of Yagi antennas. It runs under MS-DOS.
Meteor Prediction
This is a program of radio amateurs for the prediction of meteor scatter. We don't know its reliability, and there is no documentation in the package. It runs under MS-DOS
Meteor v4.0 & Colorgramme
Software for meteor detection and visualisation of observations. Can be found at http://radio.meteor.free.fr/.
EZNEC Antenna Software
EZNEC and EZNEC+ are powerful but very easy-to-use programs for modeling and analyzing nearly any kind of antenna in its actual operating environment. EZNEC plots azimuth and elevation patterns; tells you gain, feedpoint impedance, SWR, and current distribution; finds and reports beamwidth, 3-dB pattern points, f/b ratio, takeoff angle, sidelobe characteristics; and more. All information, including patterns, can be displayed on screen or printed on any Windows compatible printer. Can be found at http://www.eznec.com/.
Miscellaneous Software
- CooReader (author Marek Samujllo)
measuring visual meteor plots - MetSim (author Sirko Molau)
meteor storm simulation. For information on how to run in Win7 or other 64-bit operating systems, see the readme file. - Between 2001 and 2004, Marco Langbroek wrote (sometimes with the help of Marc de Lignie and Casper ter Kuile) a number of MS Excel applications for various types of calculations relating to meteor astronomy. Most of it relates to meteor orbits. Among them is a spreadsheet which allows you to calculate orbital elements from a (geocentric) meteor radiant position and speed.