Development and continuous spectroscopi campaign in the framework of the Spanish meteor network

Abstract

One of the aims of the SPanish Meteor Network (SPMN) is the study of the chemical composition of meteoroids from the analysis of the emission spectrum produced when these particles ablate in the atmosphere. Besides, these spectra provide useful information about the mechanisms that control this ablation process and also about the chemical nature of the parent bodies of meteoroid streams [1, 2, 3, 4]. For this reason, a significant part of our effort has focused on the deployment of spectrographs at our meteor observing stations. The first of these devices, which were based on high-sensibility CCD video cameras endowed with holographic diffraction gratings, started operation in 2006 from our station in Sevilla and also from the mobile station at Cerro Negro. The first of these stations is performing since that year a continuous spectroscopic campaign. Nowadays, these spectral video cameras work continuously from 8 SPMN stations. Favourable weather conditions in Spain play a key role in the successful development of this continuous spectroscopic campaign. We present here a description of our systems together with some preliminary results we have obtained so far.