Contents:

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 Return to RAMSES homepage

1992

A basic set-up for RAMSES has reached completion. In order to be able to interpret the observations in a scientifically defendable way, about 50 professional articles about radio meteors were fetched at the library of the University of Liège. To analyze the contents of these articles, the Ramses Physics Section (RPS) was founded. This is a group of people working on the RAMSES project, who regularly meet to discuss their findings.

Several important subjects were analyzed: the ablation of meteoroids, the measuring software, the behavior of radio waves in plasmas, techniques for the determination of stream radiants with radio set-ups,... This was discussed in 5 RPS meetings. A second visit to the library in Liège yielded an additional 150 articles.

1993

This year, we first presented the RAMSES project to the outside world. We gave a lecture at the semi-annual meeting of the Meteor Working Group of the NVWS (The Netherlands), and two lectures at the Urania Public Observatory. We also learned about two similar projects: one in Ghent (ProMeteoS) and one in the Netherlands (FLARMO). Two meetings were organized with these people: one at the Urania Observatory and one in Vught (NL). We discussed our views and problems related to the set-up and the radio meteor phenomenon. These meetings resulted in a mailing list about radio meteors on Internet.

At the International Meteor Conference of the IMO (Puimichel, France), we presented three lectures: one about the set-up, one about the radio meteor phenomenon and a third on the measurement of the altitude of underdense meteors. We also made one poster about the set-up. The reactions on our work were very positive.

The 10 RPS meetings were primarily about the analysis of interferences, the altitude and mass index of underdense meteors, the characteristics of the hardware and the Fresnel-oscillations in meteor profiles. The measuring software was debugged, and a program was written to manually sort the observed profiles.

The article list was transformed into a database, and keywords were added to each publication in order to simplify queries. We also set up an archive of photographs and slides about RAMSES.

1994

Once more, most of the work we did was theoretical. There were 9 meetings of the Ramses Physics Section. We primarily concentrated on the elimination of interference, the further analysis of the scatter theory (in order to be able to do better predictions of the shape of the observed profiles), the ablation of meteoroids in the atmosphere and atmospheric models. In July, four collaborators of the RAMSES Project went to the Engelhardt Astronomical Observatory in Kazan (Russia) in order to learn about the statistical reduction of radio meteor observations. There were also two meetings with other radio meteor observers from Belgium and the Netherlands, one at our observatory and one at the Ghent University.

Undergraduate scriptions are being written about RAMSES. Tom Roelandts finished one this year: "Archivering en verwerking van radiowaarnemingen van meteoren" (Storing and reduction of radio meteor observations). It discusses the "xmeteor"-program Tom wrote. Werner Depoorter started a scription about the simulation of radio meteors.

We also worked on the set-up. In September, we got a computer for the reduction of the observations, and December brought a network connection between the measuring computer and the reduction computer. We also bought a new digitalization card. This was possible thanks to financial support of the Urania Public Observatory. Additions for 1995 were planned. These additions will be possible thanks to sponsorship of the Kredietbank.

As we are not able to observe continuously yet due to a limited storage capacity, only two major streams were properly monitored: the Perseids and the Leonids.

Via the International Meteor Organization (IMO), 6 new radio meteor observers from America and Europe contacted us for answering their questions. Most of the communication with them was through electronic mail. On Internet, we offered an ftp-site, with all kind of information related to radio meteors. An introductory article about the RAMSES project was published in "Urania Actief," the journal of the Urania Public Observatory. On November 30, we gave a lecture about the project for the Astronomy Working Group of the Ghent University.

1995

Much changes were noted concerning the hardware. The computer network of the observatory was expanded to the observing tower which houses RAMSES. This linked the observing set-up to the newly acquired reduction and storage computer, a 486DX2/66 running Linux. A new A/D-converter was also installed. Shortly hereafter, however, the set-up was severely damaged by lightning. The receiver, A/D-card and the whole computer network broke down. RAMSES has been out of service since then (beginning of July). From then on, we concentrated on the characteristics of a new system, the purchasing of a new receiver and the quest for a better transmitter.

Meanwhile, we continued working on the theory. In ten meetings, we discussed reflection mechanisms on meteor trails, the spatial distribution of potentially reflecting meteor trails, the correlation between visual and radio observations, reduction techniques and antenna theory. Werner Depoorter, now an undergraduated computer scientist, wrote an undergraduate scription titled "Een simulatieprogramma voor radiometeoren" (A simulation program for radio meteors, in dutch), in which he presents a program for the numerical simulation of radio waves on underdense trails. We also continued extending the Ramses Literature DataBase (RLDB), which now contains about 670 references. This year, more than 100 articles were added to our archive, which now totals about 430 articles and books.

At the IMC, Cis Verbeeck presented an article about "The spatial distribution of potential reflecting points in meteor forward scatter," and Jean-Marc Wislez prepared a poster entitled "Forward scattering of radio waves off meteor trails." The Proceedings of the IMC 1995 contain extensive contributions concerning these presentations.

1996

In 1996 we mainly thought about the future of RAMSES. As the set-up broke down last year, we now brainstormed about the new hardware to build. To build the hardware, we asked the De Nayer Instituut, an engineering school in Mechelen. Steven Raes, a last year telecommunication engineering student, designed and started the building of the new set-up. We also bought a new A/D-converter and a DAT tape recorder. The reduction software is being rewritten by Koen Clement. We also thought about the far future, when most East European broadcasters will have switched to the West European frequencies. We first thought about using amateur beacons, but somewhat later we found a company that may be willing to set up a transmitter especially for radio meteor experiments. We therefore started analyzing the parameters of a system especially tailored for radio meteor observations. There were 8 meetings of the Ramses Physics Section to discuss practical and theoretical aspects of our work on RAMSES. Bob Verhaegen joined our group. At the International Meteor Conference (IMC) in Apeldoorn (NL), Cis Verbeeck presented a paper about the observability of meteor streams. The Proceedings of last year's IMC were published this year. They contained two extended articles from the RAMSES-team. We continued to develop the radio section of the website of the International Meteor Organization. We answered radio meteor questions of 11 people from 4 continents.

Last change: March 23, 1997.