Multi-station Meteor Monitoring (M³) System. II. System Upgrade and a Pathfinder Network

Abstract Meteors are important phenomena reflecting many properties of interplanetary dust particles. The study of their origin, mass distribution, and orbit evolution requires a large data volume, which can only be obtained using large meteor networks. After meteor networks in Europe and America, we present our designs and upgrades of a proposed network in China. The new designs are mainly aimed at facilitating the data gathering process. Each of the newly designed meteor stations can now support up to four cameras to cover the full sky. A newer version of the meteor station software now works as an integral system, which can streamline the process of detecting, measuring, and uploading meteors. We have built a meteor data platform to store, process, and display the meteor data automatically. The software and data platform are designed to be easy to learn and use, so they can attract more people to join and operate meteor stations. Four stations are installed as the first phase of the network, and during the operation, in 10 months, the network detected 8683 orbits; we find that half of the orbits can be related to established meteoroid streams. The statistical analysis of sporadic meteoroids shows a bimodal distribution of the velocities, which coincides with previous studies. The distribution of Tisserand parameters, T j , shows the two peaks at T j = 0 and 3, indicating the different orbits of parent bodies (isotropic and ecliptic), which are divided by T j = 2. The falling trajectory of a meteorite was also predicted using the observational data of the network. We are currently expanding the network, and in the future, we will carry out a detailed analysis of the key parameters of the distribution of the meteoroids.