A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux network during the month of June 2020 is presented. 6122 multiple station meteors were captured which allowed to calculate 1834 orbits. June 2020 was better than the average for this month, but less favorable than June 2019 which remains a record month of June.
1 Introduction
The last weeks of May and first weeks of June display very low meteor activity combined with short nights with between 7 hours and less than 6 hours of capture time. Therefore, no spectacular numbers of orbits are to be expected. Collecting orbits under these circumstances remains a challenge. What did June 2020 bring us?
2 June 2020 statistics
June is the most difficult month for CAMS BeNeLux because of the short observing window of barely 5 hours dark sky each night. June 2020 brought better weather conditions than usually for this time of the year, although the weather was not as good as in June 2019. Three nights remained without any double station meteors. Eight nights resulted in more than 100 orbits in spite of the short duration of these nights while in 2019, 13 nights had more than 100 orbits and two nights got over 200 orbits each! The statistics for June 2020 are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1 with the same month in previous years since the start of CAMS BeNeLux in 2012.
Table 1 – June 2020 compared to previous months of June.
| Year | Nights | Orbits | Stations | Max. Cams | Min. Cams | Mean Cams |
| 2012 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | – | 0.0 |
| 2013 | 16 | 102 | 9 | 12 | – | 7.0 |
| 2014 | 23 | 379 | 13 | 31 | – | 19.0 |
| 2015 | 20 | 779 | 15 | 44 | – | 32.9 |
| 2016 | 18 | 345 | 17 | 50 | 15 | 35.7 |
| 2017 | 26 | 1536 | 19 | 66 | 30 | 52.1 |
| 2018 | 28 | 1425 | 21 | 78 | 52 | 64.9 |
| 2019 | 28 | 2457 | 20 | 84 | 63 | 75.6 |
| 2020 | 27 | 1833 | 24 | 93 | 60 | 83.1 |
| Total | 186 | 8856 |
While all CAMS stations in Belgium operate 7/7 with AutoCams, some CAMS stations in the Netherlands still operate occasionally when the weather is clear. This way the coverage of the northern part of the network area is a little bit less than the southern part. For the coverage of the atmosphere by a camera network the chances for multiple station events especially during nights with variable weather depends on how many cameras are operational. The greatest progress for the CAMS BeNeLux network was the introduction of Auto CAMS by Steve Rau. Gradually more and more CAMS operators decided to make use of AutoCams to operate their system 7/7. As the weather proves often to be unpredictable, the only way not to miss unexpected clear sky is to have the camera systems running all nights, regardless the weather.
Figure 1 – Comparing June 2020 to previous months of June in the CAMS BeNeLux history. The blue bars represent the number of orbits, the red bars the maximum number of cameras running in a single night and the yellow bar the average number of cameras running per night.
During the best nights up to 93 cameras were operational (84 in June 2019 and 78 in 2018). Thanks to AutoCAMS at least 60 cameras were all nights operational (63 in 2019 and 52 in 2018). On average 89.4% of all available cameras were active, comparable to the 90% of last year. The ratio of multiple station coincidences depends on the number of stations with clear sky during the same time span. The more stable the weather conditions are network wide and the less technical problems, the better the chances to catch a meteor from at least two stations.
Two RMS cameras produced the best scores in terms of orbits of all cameras in the CAMS BeNeLux network. There is no competition to nominate any most successful camera in the network, but in this case, it is interesting to see how the RMS performs compared to the Watecs. Certain cameras are pointed at regions where the chances for multiple station events is simply significant less, for instance towards the borders of the camera network coverage. However, to illustrate the order of difference for these RMS cameras, it is useful to compare these numbers with what the most successful Watecs obtained.
Table 2 – The ten cameras of the CAMS BeNeLux network with the best score in terms of orbits during June 2020.
| Camera | Total orbits |
Total nights |
| Grapfontaine BE (RMS 003814) | 378 | 30 |
| Genk BE (RMS 003815) | 241 | 30 |
| Kattendijke NL (RMS 000378) | 178 | 30 |
| Mechelen BE (RMS 003831) | 143 | 29 |
| Grapfontaine BE (000814) | 141 | 30 |
| Wilderen BE (000380) | 133 | 30 |
| Mechelen BE (RMS 003830) | 130 | 29 |
| Mechelen BE (000383) | 116 | 30 |
| Dourbes BE (000395) | 115 | 30 |
| Mechelen BE (000391) | 113 | 30 |
3 Conclusion
June 2020 was a good month of June, but June 2019 remains the best month of June ever. The total number of orbits for the month of June rose to 8856 in 186 June nights that allowed to collect orbits. This way the month of June becomes the poorest covered month of the year for CAMS BeNeLux instead of March which had a record of orbits this year.
Acknowledgment
Many thanks to all participants in the CAMS BeNeLux network for their dedicated efforts. The data on which this report is based has been taken from the CAMS website (http://cams.seti.org/FDL/index-BeNeLux.html). The CAMS BeNeLux team was operated by the following volunteers during June 2020:
Hans Betlem (Leiden, Netherlands, CAMS 371, 372 and 373), Felix Bettonvil (Utrecht, Netherlands, CAMS 376 and 377), Jean-Marie Biets (Wilderen, Belgium, CAMS 379, 380, 381 and 382), Martin Breukers (Hengelo, Netherlands, CAMS 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 and 327, RMS 328 and 329), Guiseppe Canonaco (Genk, RMS 3815), Bart Dessoy (Zoersel, Belgium, CAMS 397, 398, 804, 805, 806 and 888), Jean-Paul Dumoulin, Dominique Guiot and Christian Walin (Grapfontaine, Belgium, CAMS 814 and 815, RMS 003814), Uwe Glässner (Langenfeld, Germany, RMS 3800), Luc Gobin (Mechelen, Belgium, CAMS 390, 391, 807 and 808), Tioga Gulon (Nancy, France, CAMS 3900 and 3901), Robert Haas (Alphen aan de Rijn, Netherlands, CAMS 3160, 3161, 3162, 3163, 3164, 3165, 3166 and 3167), Robert Haas (Texel, Netherlands, CAMS 810, 811, 812 and 813), Robert Haas / Edwin van Dijk (Burlage, Germany, CAMS 801, 802, 821 and 822), Kees Habraken (Kattendijke, Netherlands, RMS 000378), Klaas Jobse (Oostkapelle, Netherlands, CAMS 3030, 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3035, 3036 and 3037), Carl Johannink (Gronau, Germany, CAMS 311, 314, 317, 318, 3000, 3001, 3002, 3003, 3004 and 3005), Hervé Lamy (Dourbes, Belgium, CAMS 394 and 395), Hervé Lamy (Humain Belgium, CAMS 816), Hervé Lamy (Ukkel, Belgium, CAMS 393), Koen Miskotte (Ermelo, Netherlands, CAMS 351, 352, 353 and 354), Tim Polfliet (Gent, Belgium, CAMS 396), Steve Rau (Zillebeke, Belgium, CAMS 3850 and 3852), Paul and Adriana Roggemans (Mechelen, Belgium, CAMS 383, 384, 388, 389, 399 and 809, RMS 003830 and 003831), Hans Schremmer (Niederkruechten, Germany, CAMS 803) and Erwin van Ballegoij (Heesch, Netherlands, CAMS 347 and 348).
