Amazing: During the conference of the Swiss Astronomical Society (SAG) in Emmenbrücke, Beat Booz gave a very impressive lecture entitled “Al-Khadhaf - First observed meteorite fall on March 8, 2022 in Oman”. Thanks to his precise calculations, the first piece of Al Khadhaf was found very soon and fresh.

Good News from Sottogottardo! You remember: Last summer, a heavy thunderstorm destroyed the video station LOC completely. Meanwhile, Stefano buildt it up again! The station LOC is in operation and helps to localize the meteors again. Many thanks to Stefano! I'm sure, we will recognize this happy circumstance in the monthly meteor statistics...

A great day as usual: The 12. Meteor Meeting of FMA was held in the observatory of Bülach with participants from all over Switzerland and even Italy.
Please find following: Protocol  /  Interna  /  Akustische Lokalisierung

What a great event again: The 11. Meteor Meeting of FMA was held in Falera with participants from all over Switzerland.
Please inform yourself about Protocol  /  Interna  /  Meteoriten-Fall und -Suche  /  Meteor Spectroscopy  /  Abschätzung Endmasse

Confirmation of the outburst of the tau-Herculids (TAH): During the night of May 30/31, numerous meteors were recorded by FMA members. The radiant of 2/3 of these meteors was located at about RA 210° (14h) / DE 25°. Comparison: The official radiant of the TAH's is RA 228° (15.2h) / 40°, resulting in a distance of about 20°. It is very likely, that the observed meteors originated from a side arm of the tau-Herculids. The existence of this side arm was expected due to the partial fragmentation of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann observed during its encounter with Earth in 1995.

Outburst of volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai at 04.15 UT. The infrasound detectors of GNO, LOC, BOS, VTE and ENT recorded the arrival of the first pressure wave (coming via North pole) as well as the second wave group (coming from the South Pole).
See the recordings as pptx-file (animated) and as pdf-file.
Watch also the very interesting TV contribution about this volcano outburst.

During the night of 24-25 of October 2021, a new long-period meteor shower has been discovered. For confirmation of this new stream, the working group FMA (we!) was asked for additional data. After checking of our data base and calculation of the orbital elements of the causing body by Beat Booz, we found two records, made by Stefano Sposetti (GNO) and Jochen Richert (BOS). The two recordings correspond very well to the new meteor stream, which was named according its radiant: It is called "October-zeta-Perseids (OZP)". Congratulations! Well done guys!
Please find the MeteorNews magazine, the separated article and the online version by Paul Roggemans about the successful cooperation between Global Meteor Network GMN, CAMS-BeNeLux and FMA.

Rare event: An Earth Grazer touched the upper atmosphere in a flat angle. From FMA, totally 10 stations captured it by video, photo or radio signal. During this 28 sec. event, the visitor wasn't sufficiently decelerated, so it escaped again into space. Fare well, lucky boy!

Martin Dubs updated his works about the Meteor spectra processing with Python.

On October 13, 2019, at about 22:18:16 UT, a bright bolide occurred over Switzerland and was recorded by photographic, video, radio and infrasound methode. Please find the MeteorNews magazine and the separated article. Thanks to Paul Roggemans for the appreciated support.

What a great event: The 10. Meteor Meeting of FMA was held in Bellinzona with 20 participants from all over Switzerland.
Protocol,  Infraschall,  RaspberryBoom,  Renchen,  TLE-RemoteCam,  Meteorspec. mit Python

A fireball with a trajectory of over 150 km has been registered by video cameras of the Fachgruppe Meteorastronomie (FMA) as well as by FRIPON stations. The event did not match the orbital elements of any known meteor shower and was classified as sporadic.
More...

New processing for meteor spectra: Martin Dubs introduced his Python script which is able to process the whole spectrum handling procedure: The script includes the conversion of the video file into bmp-images, the subtraction of the background, the transformation to orthographic projection, the registration of the spectra, the tilt and slant correction, the extraction of the 1-dimensional spectrum and the necessary wavelength calibration. For more information, please visit the Meteor Spectroscopy Website of Martin Dubs.

Meteor detection with new methode: Probably detection of a bright fireball by infrasound. It seems to be very likely, that the station ENT and VTE recorded the infrasound wave of the same meteor. Mehr...

For the first time, a so called "Gigantic Jet" was captured by Roger Spinner. This and further TLE's, taken from Jochen Richert and Andreas Buchmann are shown here.