Video observation of meteors at Yunnan Observatory

In the last 20 years, with the development of the CCD and image intensifiers, the use of small flexible video meteor observation systems has gradually increased, with the prospect that one day video observation will replace the visual observation and ordinary photographic observations. In this paper we report on the research and development of the No.1 meteor-comet video camera system of Yunnan Observatory and some preliminary observed results. The system consists of 5 changeable modules; it has a 36° large-field camera dedicated to the observation of meteors, with which a magnitude 6 star can be recorded on a single frame with an accuracy of about 0.2 mag. We also present a comparison of the video camera system with the traditional photographic system, and outline the merits, possible improvements and future development of the video system.