Blaauw, Rhiannon C.

Cruse, Katherine S.

NASA Technical Reports Server

Comparison of ASGARD and 
UFOCapture 
PARI, North Carolina, August 4-5, 2011 
Rhiannon Blaauw 
Katherine Cruse 
Meteoroid Environment Office 
EV44 NASA MSFC  
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20120001493 2019-08-30T19:04:09+00:00Z
Introduction 
Set out to compare detection efficiencies between UFOCapture and 
ASGARD 
 
 
 
Outline 
  1)Overview of equipment 
  2)Overview of each software 
  3)Comparison of  
 user-friendliness  
  4)Comparison of software  
 output 
  5)Comparison of results 
   
 
Results Compared:  
•  Sensitivity of the two systems 
•  False alarm rates 
•  Astrometry  
•  Photometry 
 
   
Video Input 
17 mm Schneider lens (25 degree field of view) on a Watec CCD camera was 
split and input into the two computer systems, running UFOCapture or 
ASGARD 
 
Cost: Less than $1,000 for Watec CCD + lens + encasing 
 
Detects size range smaller (more faint) than All Sky Cameras. Therefore sees 
considerably more (up to 30 on a clear night). 
 
ASGARD Overview 
•All Sky and Guided Automatic Real-time Detection 
•University of Western Ontario 
•Originally created to run on All-Sky cameras 
•Not publically available 
 
•Runs on Debian GNU/Linux 
 
•Compatible with several video sources (analog video camera interfaces, 
digital camera interfaces) 
 
•Detects meteors in real-time, but can also run on pre-recorded video. 
 
•Detection: Compares video frame-by-frame, pixel-by-pixel. Several plugins 
can be used for detection process. User can specify settings in the plugins, 
such as how many pixels above background for an event to be triggered.  
•A set of rejection algorithms throw out non-meteor events 
 
 
UFOCapture Overview 
Multipurpose motion-capture software 
(including security purposes) 
 
$225-$250 depending on exchange rate 
 
Compatible with many different video inputs 
 
Need PC: Windows XP, 
Windows 2000, or Windows 7 
 
Fairly well documented on website  
 
Preset files to initialize the settings  
 
Good user-interface to tweak settings  
 
 
 
Installation 
 -UFOCapture has an setup.exe file 
 -ASGARD requires Linux knowledge. Installation is non-trivial and non-
intuitive. 
 
Plates 
– ASGARD requires an extra program – METAL – or an IDL script  
– Need to match up many stars (25+) all around FOV  
• User interface is good, but not intuitive 
• Less than 0.02 degree residuals 
– UFOCapture has it built into program 
• User interface = very intuitive 
• Fairly automated 
• Less than 0.03 degree residuals  
 User-Labor Comparison - Setup 
• Daily data reduction 
– UFOCapture requires an additional program: 
• UFOAnalyzer takes all the events UFOCapture has detected, 
and identifies whether it is a meteor 
– Many events are misidentified – requires manual filtering through 
each event 
– Therefore more user-intervention for UFOCapture 
– ASGARD has real-time processing 
• Identifies whether the event is a meteor 
• Put in a reject folder if it is identified to be a non-meteor 
event 
• Still misidentification of events: requires manual filtering 
  User-Labor Comparison 
UFOAnalyzer 
– .csv (time, angular velocity, shower code, 
start/end RA/DEC, and more) 
– .xml (azimuth, elevation, and more) 
– Trail map (radiants) 
– .avi 
– .jpg 
 System Output Comparison 
ASGARD 
 -.tar (.png of each frame) 
 -.txt (time, site, plate, the coordinates of the meteor 
in each frame and its magnitude at that point) 
 -.avi 
 -.png  
 
 System Output Comparison 
Initial Software Pros/Cons 
UFOCapture/Analyzer 
 
Pros 
•Easy setup  
•Available online 
•nice interface 
•Well documented 
 
 
Cons 
•manually run Capture’s output into 
Analyzer 
•during lightning storm it takes a 
while to process 
•program occasionally crashes & system 
needs restarting (windows 7) 
•manual intervention 
ASGARD 
 
Pros 
•video buffer (to go back and look at raw 
videos later) 
•Capture +Analyzing is together. 
•already identifies whether it is 
 a meteor event or not 
 
 
Cons 
•not well documented 
•need METAL to make plates 
•azimuth + elevations in slightly  
 different format 
 
 
   Initial Results 
UFOCapture = 207 Meteors 
 
ASGARD = 80 Meteors 
3 nights of lightning storm – not included 
– Hundreds of false alarms for UFOCapture 
 
   Initial Results 
       False Alarms 
 Initial Results – Astrometry 
Magnitudes not as reliable. 
More work needs to be done in this area. 
  Initial Results - Photometry 
• Lowering the threshold at which ASGARD flags 
an event 
 
• Changing detection plugin – affects how an 
event is triggered. Experimented with other 
versions. 
 
• Taking out reject filters – inspected which 
reject filters were flagging real meteors. 
 
 
     Changes to ASGARD 
 Lowered Threshold (from 75 to 50) and  
removed a rejection filter that flagged a 
bunch of single frame triggers (meant for 
blinking planes). 
        Preliminary Results 
False Alarms: UFOCapture = 153 Meteors ASGARD = 112 Meteors 
ASGARD Benefits: Very automated. Results easily accessed 
in the morning without doing additional work. A 
preferred software if it can become as sensitive as 
UFOcapture. 
 
UFOCapture Benefits: Overall rates initially higher than 
ASGARD. Easy install. Windows compatible. 
 
Additional Work:  
• Experiment with a  
    different plugin 
• Meteor photometry  
 
Conclusions + Future Work 



Comparison of ASGARD and UFOCapture

Abstract

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