A nice meteor image, as recorded by one of our intensified video cameras. This image was obtained during the Perseid meteor stream in August 1997 with the meteor camera IMCA, from a location in Buhle, Germany.

A view of the IMCA (Intensified Meteor CAmera). It is essentially a normal video camera, using a so-called image intensifier. An image intensifier is used e.g. in night-vision goggles and amplifies the incoming light by a factor of several 1000. It allows to record stars at the night sky which are up to a factor of 10 fainter than what is visible by naked eye.

The first test of IMCA in August 1997 with Roland Egger from the AVWM. For a large version but in jpg-format (108 kB) click here.

Block diagram of our "LCC" camera line. LCC stands for Low-Cost Camera (around 1 kEuro for everything). We will use three of these cameras in our Leonid99 campaign.

Block diagram of the "ICC" camera line. ICC stands for Intensified CCD Camera, the quality is about a factor of 3 better than the LCC line, the price about 10 times higher.

Photograph of one of the ICC cameras on a tripod.

The setup for ICC1, the camera used in the Leonid MAC airplane campaign. Power supply, AC/AC converter, and time inserter are fixed on a board, which is shown here on top of the 12 V video recorder.

The observing hut that we have used at Calar Alto Observatory (CAHA) for the Leonids 1999. It has a 5 x 5 m2 closed room and a 5 x 5 m2 area with a roll-off roof where we can put our cameras.

Leonids 1999: The hut as seen from the other side. Note the horrible weather we had...

Leonids 1999: The guest appartments on CAHA. In the background, the dome of the 3.5-m-telescope is visible.

Leonids 1999: The Observatory Sierra Nevada (OSN). In the background in the far distance you can see Grenada. OSN is about 1 hour by car and 2500 m in altitude away from Grenada.

Leonids 1999: The plateau of the observatory. When there is no snow, it can be reached via 4-wheel-drive car. The domes house a 1.5-m-Ritchey-Cretien telescope, and one 90-cm-Ritchey-Cretien telescope. The little dome to the left contains a radiation monitor which is continously operating.

Our man in the plane: Michael Schmidhuber flew on Peter Jenniskens' aircraft mission to observe the Leonids 1999.