A Fireball Collector and Analyser for UKMON and GMN

Version: 2025.11.3

This tool allows authorised users to collect fireball data from UKMON and GMN and then to reduce and solve it.

Prerequisites

• Miniconda or anaconda, required to create python virtual environments for RMS and WMPL.
• RMS installed with its own Conda virtual environment. This is used to reduce raw data.
• WMPL installed with its own Conda virtual environment. This is used to solve trajectories.
• A local folder where you will store fireball data. This is called basedir in this documentation.

The following are optional:

• GMN Coordinator's ssh key. See "Collecting Data from GMN" below.
• WSL2 activated with rsync installed. Required to collect data from GMN.
• UKMON API Key. See "Sending Solutions to UKMON" below

Installation

• First install WMPL and RMS in their own Conda environments and verify they're working.
• Then install this package setup_fireballCollector.exe from here.

Configuration

• The first time you launch the app, a text editor will appear to allow you to configure the application.
• Update at least the values of basedir, rms_loc, rms_env, wmpl_loc, and wmpl_env as appropriate and save.
• Configuration can be updated at any time from the Configuration item on the File menu.

Usage

Getting Raw Data

• Enter a date and time in the format YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS into the Image Selection box, then click "Get Images".

  • After a few seconds, the listbox below should be populated with images from around the time you selected, provided the UKMON live feed captured something.
  • If nothing appears, check the UKMON livestream to make sure you chose a suitable time.

• Go through the image list and click Remove or press the Delete key to delete any that are not of the event you are interested in.

• Once you've whittled the list down to just the interesting events, you can select Get ECSVs from the Raw menu. This will attempt to get raw track data for each image in ECSV format.

• You can also click Get Videos to collect any video data thats available.

Manually Reducing an Image

If you have a FITS or FR file from RMS along with the camera's config and platepar files, you can analyse the data using RMS's SkyFit2 tool.

Select an image in the file list then select Reduce Selected Image from the Raw menu. Once you're finished with SkyFit, remember to press Ctrl-S to save before quitting! This will save the analysis as an ECSV file.

Solving from ECSVs

• Once you have at least two ECSVs, you can click Solve from the Solve menu. This will invoke WMPL which will read the ECSVs and attempt to find a trajectory. It may take some time.

• If the solver is successful, you can view the solution by selecting View Solution from the Solve menu. The left-hand list will now show the output of the solver so you can examine it. You can switch back to viewing the raw images by selecting Review Images from the Review menu.

• If the solve process fails or if the solution seems very poor then try excluding some detections. To do this, select Excl/Incl ECSV from the Raw menu then rerun the Solver.

• If the solution was really bad its worth using Delete Solution from the Solve menu before attempting a rerun.

Sending Solutions to UKMON

Once you have a solution, select Upload orbit from the Solve menu. This will create a Zip file that bundles the created trajectory pickle file with any images and videos.

If you're a member of the UKMON team and have an API key, the file will be uploaded directly to our server (provided its less than 10MB in size) Otherwise you can upload the file to any file-sharing site and email a link to us where one of the team will check and upload it to our Archive.

Sharing Raw Data

If you've configured a raw data location in the configuration file, Share Raw Data on the raw menu will create a zip file of all the raw data and copy it to the location. For example, if you have Dropbox installed and set the share location to a folder in your Dropbox, then the zip file will be copied there. You can then share the Dropbox link as appropriate.

Archiving and Deleting Fireball Data

Once a solution has been obtained and uploaded you can use Archive this Folder and Delete this Folder to compress the current folder into a zip file, or to delete it entirely.

Collecting data from GMN

Members of the GMN Coordinators group who have permission from Denis Vida can also use this tool to collect raw data directly from GMN.

If you fall into this category you can fill in the [gmn] section of the config file with the name of your SSH private key and other details. This will activate additional menu options to Get GMN Raw Data and to use the Watchlist.

If you've collected data from GMN using this tool, then you can review the Stacks from each camera via Review Stacks on the Review menu.

Logs

You can view the logs from the File menu. The logs are created in %TEMP%/fbcollector.