A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux network during the month of July 2020 is presented. July 2020 allowed to obtain meteor orbits during 28 nights resulting in 12834 multiple station meteors, with a total number for July 2020 of 3823 orbits. A maximum of 90 cameras was operational at 24 camera stations during this month.
1 Introduction
Although a summer month, the weather in July is often unfavorable for astronomy in the BeNeLux area. The short nights with only about 6 hours of observing time are easily ruined by bad weather. The overall meteor activity increases significantly during this month with some well-established showers late July while Perseid activity becomes clearly visible. So far, July 2018 and 2019 were both excellent months of July for our CAMS network, would July 2020 become another successful month of July?
2 July 2020 statistics
CAMS BeNeLux collected 12834 multi-station meteors, good for 3823 orbits (against 13243 multi-station meteors and 4139 orbits in July 2019). This is a nice result although slightly less than previous two years.
While July 2018 and 2019 had more than half of all July nights with almost completely clear nights for the network, July 2020 had about half of its nights with unfavorable weather. Three nights ended without any single orbit, 14 nights had more than 100 orbits (17 in 2019), 6 nights had more than 200 orbits (9 in 2019). July 30–31 was the most successful night with 542 orbits, an absolute record for a July night. Last year, July 29–30 was the record night with 504 orbits for July 2019, thanks to the delta Aquariids South shower maximum. The statistics of July 2020 are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1 with the same month in previous years since the start of CAMS BeNeLux in 2012. In 9 years, 219 July nights allowed to obtain orbits with a grand total of 18463 orbits collected during this month in all these years.
No new cameras were added to the network and relatively few technical problems interfered, which helped to have good coverage of the atmosphere. The BeNeLux CAMS network had its last major expansion in the summer of 2017 and since then every now and then some new cameras were added. The biggest progress came with AutoCams which allowed almost all CAMS camera stations to function all nights. This way the coverage of the atmosphere is also guaranteed during nights with variable weather. The northern part of the network still has less good coverage because of a lack of stations using AutoCams.
July 2020 had 90 cameras operational at best, 4 more than in July 2019, while the minimum number of operational cameras dropped back to the July 2018 level with 59 cameras but still, the average with 79.1 remained higher than all previous months of July.
Figure 1 – Comparing July 2020 to previous months of July in the CAMS BeNeLux history. The blue bars represent the number of orbits, the red bars the maximum number of cameras capturing in a single night and the yellow bar the average number of cameras capturing per night.
Table 1 – July 2020 compared to previous months of July.
| Year | Nights | Orbits | Stations | Max. Cams | Min. Cams | Mean Cams |
| 2012 | 7 | 49 | 4 | 4 | – | 2.6 |
| 2013 | 22 | 484 | 10 | 18 | – | 12.9 |
| 2014 | 19 | 830 | 14 | 30 | – | 22.0 |
| 2015 | 28 | 976 | 15 | 43 | – | 26.7 |
| 2016 | 28 | 1420 | 18 | 50 | 10 | 37.9 |
| 2017 | 27 | 2644 | 20 | 63 | 30 | 51.6 |
| 2018 | 30 | 4098 | 19 | 72 | 59 | 67.7 |
| 2019 | 30 | 4139 | 21 | 86 | 63 | 75.2 |
| 2020 | 28 | 3823 | 24 | 90 | 59 | 79.1 |
| Total | 219 | 18463 |
Table 2 lists the 20 best performing cameras in the network in terms of orbits. Note the scores of the RMS cameras. Although the scores are good in terms of orbits and the quality of the orbits proves to be very good, still some RMS cameras suffer too often technical problems, either due to the RPi or due to network problems.
Table 2 – Comparing RMS cameras among the twenty cameras of the CAMS BeNeLux network with the best score in terms of orbits during July 2020.
| Camera | Total orbits | Total nights |
| 003814 (RMS, Grapfontaine, BE) | 930 | 31 |
| 003815 (RMS, Genk, BE) | 413 | 29 |
| 003800 (RMS, Langenfeld, DE) | 344 | 31 |
| 000378 (RMS, Kattendijke, NL) | 309 | 31 |
| 003830 (RMS, Mechelen, BE) | 290 | 31 |
| 000384 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 260 | 31 |
| 000394 (Watec, Dourbes, BE) | 257 | 31 |
| 003005 (Watec, Gronau, DE) | 254 | 20 |
| 003831 (RMS, Mechelen, BE) | 246 | 31 |
| 000395 (Watec, Dourbes, BE) | 238 | 31 |
| 000329 (RMS, Hengelo, NL) | 234 | 31 |
| 000814 (Watec, Grapfontaine, BE) | 233 | 31 |
| 003003 (Watec, Gronau, DE) | 231 | 20 |
| 000380 (Watec, Wilderen, BE) | 218 | 31 |
| 000399 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 214 | 31 |
| 000328 (RMS, Hengelo, NL) | 199 | 31 |
| 000815 (Watec, Grapfontaine, BE) | 199 | 31 |
| 000809 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 194 | 31 |
| 000391 (Watec, Mechelen, BE) | 194 | 31 |
| 000393 (Watec, Ukkel, BE) | 184 | 31 |
3 Conclusion
July 2020 became a successful month of July in the CAMS BeNeLux history although the total orbits remained a bit less than previous two years.
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[1]. The CAMS BeNeLux team is operated by the following volunteers:
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).
