Software & data
I believe scientific software and data should be free for everyone to use, inspect and improve. Almost everything my group builds is released as open source, and the Global Meteor Network's data products are public. Reliable software is what lets a network of inexpensive cameras run unattended around the world and produce research-grade measurements.
Software I lead or contribute to
| Package | What it does | Used by |
|---|---|---|
| RMS Python, C++ |
Complete software for a meteor camera station: video capture, automated meteor detection, star extraction, and calibration of star positions and brightness (astrometry and photometry). Runs on a Raspberry Pi or any Linux computer, and now also detects contrails. | Global Meteor Network (1,600+ cameras), NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, Western Meteor Physics Group |
| Western Meteor PyLib (WMPL) Python, C |
A library with the tools a meteor astronomer needs: meteor trajectory and orbit estimation with Monte Carlo uncertainties, meteor shower modelling, coordinate transforms, mass index estimation, and a meteoroid ablation and fragmentation model. | NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, Western Meteor Physics Group, GMN, fireball networks worldwide |
| Supracenter (contributor) Python |
Estimates fireball trajectories and energies from seismic and infrasound data. | Western Meteor Physics Group, Desert Fireball Network |
More of my code, including smaller research tools, is on GitHub.
On GitHub right now
Activity over the last year
Research repositories
Open data
The Global Meteor Network data are public under the CC BY 4.0 licence: daily trajectory and orbit solutions, more than 2.8 million orbits in total, meteor shower activity, and the station network. The data are used for research on meteor showers, meteoroid flux, fireballs and meteorite falls by groups around the world, and by NASA for meteor shower monitoring. The GMN live page shows the latest of them.
Teaching materials
The materials for my graduate courses in scientific Python and machine learning are open on GitHub and free to reuse. See Teaching.
Building a station
Anyone can build a GMN camera and contribute data. Instructions, hardware lists and support from the volunteer community are on the GMN wiki.