A MAGNIFICENT UDELAR PROJECT ALLOWS OPTICAL CONTROL OF THE SKY

 

The Project, which is already underway in Uruguay, arose from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of the Republic (UDELAR).

More specifically, from Dr. Gonzalo Tancredi, Professor of the Department of Astronomy, Institute of Physics of the Faculty of Sciences.

In contact with Dr. Tancredi, we have received the following information: “What we are installing is a network of fireball monitoring stations. The stations have an allsky camera that captures the entire sky in one image, from horizon to horizon. We are installing them on the rooftops of high schools across the country.”

There are 20 stations that cover the entire country.

“The stations (camera + computer) will record all changing light in the
sky. In fact, this is one of our great challenges, how to separate a fireball from a plane, an insect, a storm..."

“For this we are doing, on the one hand, the manual classification of the videos, with the help of teachers and secondary school students (to this purpose, Workshops are announced on the website); but also with the help of Engineering students we have developed an algorithm based on Machine Learning, for automatic classification.”

 

“We put together the stations with the parts that we buy: the cameras are Chinese, then there is a mini-PC and other devices that we buy in the US or locally."

“The cost of materials is around USD 1,400 (without taxes, because Udelar can buy without import taxes). We have not estimated how much the cost would be in the event of a commission, but if there was interest we could estimate it.”

“About the possibility of extension to the region, we have handled it. That is why we named it BOlidos del Cono SUR (BOCOSUR). But for now we don't have any concrete plans.”

So far what Prof. Tancredi informed us.

For our part, we add that, with the installed algorithm working, these detectors can perfectly capture an Unusual Aerial Phenomenon that would later have to be analyzed.

In the event of reporting an observation of something strange in a certain place, and having one of these detectors installed in the vicinity, this would make it possible to corroborate or not the report made and at the same time would facilitate the identification of what was sighted.