Welcome to NEMETODE

Dr John Mason is a very familiar name to anyone interested in meteor science and / or astronomy in general. Past President of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), he is the current Acting Director of the BAA Meteor Section, the Principal Lecturer at South Downs Planetarum and regularly appears on television and radio.

For over 25 years he has been leading overseas expeditions to observe and record annular and total solar eclipses, the polar aurora and major meteor showers. In 2009 he was made an MBE for his services to science education. John has been very supportive of NEMETODE since its founding and for quite some time has harboured a desire to deploy a number of cameras. Back in the 1990s John was one of the original group of dedicated obsevers in the British Isles who helped pioneer the use of video technology for meteor detection - thankfully developments in CCD and computer technology now make this pursuit much more straightforward!

Russ Slater has had a long standng interest in astronomy and works at the planetarium with John - together they have deployed the two camera systems (based on Watec 902H cameras with 6mm lenses) and Russ will be playing a leading role both in the maintenanace of the systems and the analysis of the data. John & Russ assure me that the floodlight shown in the image is a legacy system that is no longer in use!