7. Publications in Spanish.
7.1. Recent publications.
Draconids 2011: an observational guide for visual meteors.
This guide was thought for experienced and beginner visual meteor observers. It gives practical hints to carry out with success visual observations under very high visual activity, and help to send the visual report to IMO.
IYA 2009 Observational guides.
Published in 2009 (Benítez, Ocaña, Fraile, 2009) these four handbooks, written for beginner level, explain the main topics related about the four main fields of meteor observing: video-photo, visual meteors-fireballs, radiometeors and telescopic observations with binoculars.
Perseids observational guide.
Each summer, we publish a guide with regard to this meteor shower and the Acuarids, with hints for beginner meteor observers. In special recommended to visual and photographic observers.
7.2. Special issues of Meteors (Monographs)
Some issues of Meteors are specially devoted to some meteor topic. There has been four specials: Bólidos y Meteoritos (Fireballs and Meteorites, 2003), Dossier de observaciones españolas de bólidos en el periodo 1987-2003 (Spanish Fireball report from 1987-2003, 2004), Especial Archivos de observaciones, 2011) and the most recent special, about spectroscopy (2012)
7.3. Books and handbooks.
Some books have almost 20 years since were published by us, like:
Guía para el estudio de los enjambres meteóricos (Trigo, 1991)
Meteoros: descripción y metetodología (Bellot, 1991)
Introducción a la MeteorosTeoría Física de los Meteoros (Bellot, 1992)
Manual de observaciones telescópicas de meteoros (Mendez, 1994)
Manual de observaciones visuales (Bellot, 1995)
Observación de meteoros con intensificador de imagen (Benítez, 2002).
7.4. Meteor database in DVD-FTP server.
On 2006 SOMYCE edited the first set on DVD edition with all the Spanish meteor observations: visual scanned sheets, video images with MetRec, photographic images, radio counts, radio spectrograms, telescopic observations and fireballs reports. Collected in a case with four DVDs'. This data base stores about 17.2 Gb.
We edited a limited edition of 100 copies to send to SOMYCE members, Astronomical Societies of Spain and IMO members. Unfortunately, the cost of the Second Edition it has done impossible to prepare a new case in the same way, in order to avoid an excessive cost (the size of files reached 60 Gb)
Thanks to the support of Luis R. Bellot Rubio (CSIC-IAA) we develop a FTP server which you could download all the reports, even some elder journals and books at:
FTP: ftp.spg.iaa.es
Port: 7272
FTP type: SFTP
USER: ftpspg
Pass: Grupo,Solar
This information can be free downloaded for personal use, divulgation, amateurs and researchers. If you need for a paper or web this information can be taken too, citing the author and the reference: “Archivos de observaciones de la Sociedad de Observadores de Meteoros y Cometas de España (SOMYCE, 2ª Edición, 2011)
Briefly, we resume the information available in the FTP server:
- Visual Meteor Database: visual scanned reports from 1985. We used an Epsom GT-7000 photo scanner with an automatic feeder. All these observations (about 18 000 sheets) were stored in JPG images, which are the original reports and charts scanned with great effort during ten years. The key is:
DDddMMAAAAabcdexNdN.jpg, for example ej: 2627091998BENORp1d, were:
Ddd: day
MM: month
AAAA: year
abcd: IMO Code
“x” can be:
p: report
c: chart
r: summary
e: train report
NdN: “1d1” or “1d5” tell us how many reports or charts are included in one night of observation.
- Photographic meteor database: specially interesting are the photographic reports from 1998 and 1999 Leonids. We have a lot of images classified by months, but some of them are not dated, however, we collected them too by historical reasons. Image's data are in txt or excel files.
- Comet observations, carried out in the Hyakutake or Hale-Boop campaigns in 1996-1997.
- Video Meteor images from cameras TIMES 4, TIMES 5 and TIMES 6 with full frame images. If you need a complete data in postdat format, we recommend download the updated files from www.metrec.org or contact with Sirco Molau.
- Fireball report from 1982 to 2003. Some years are stored in FIDAC Dbase files.
- Telescopic database (charts and reports), mainly from 1994 and 1995.
- Publications, like some issues of Meteors and books.
There is a lot of useful information for the meteor observer. If you need copy of all or part of the data base, you can contact us in