Updated June 20, 2004

Edmonton, AB - Sky Scan Science Awareness Project is pleased to announce the successful installation of its first two remote sensing stations at Spruce Avenue School and Bannerman School on Friday, November 8. Currently in the pilot stage, the project is designed to allow Grade 9 students to detect meteors by radio. Each station includes an antenna and digital FM radio receiver (supplied by Sky Scan) connected to a computer equipped with data recording software. 

Calibrated to the frequency of 92.1 Megahertz, the stations will pick up brief radio bursts from FM stations in Calgary and Winnipeg which broadcast at that wavelength, as the transmissions are reflected off the ionization trails of meteors. A limited amount of such activity occurs any day or night of the year due to sporadic meteors, but during a meteor shower this activity significantly increases. 

In the case of the Leonids, a meteor "storm" is predicted with visual rates of hundreds or even thousands of meteors per hour peaking around 3:30 a.m. MST on Tuesday, November 19, 2002. The light of the full Moon will hamper visual observations, and notoriously poor November weather could spoil the show, but meteors can still be detected by the radio method. Indeed, for the casual observer a car radio tuned to a beyond-the-horizon transmitter such as FM 92.1 should yield a significant number of meteor "hits". 

But students of Spruce Avenue and Bannerman can go one better, using a receiving station designed for the purpose. Although much of it will be collected overnight, shower data will then be analyzed by students during school hours. Project organizers anticipate that through the cooperative effort of participating schools, information from multiple stations can be compared, and results provided to the scientific community at large. 

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A not-for-profit organization administered by the University of Alberta's Physics Department, Sky Scan is primarily funded by a grant from NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Sky Scan is also associated with community groups such as the Edmonton Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and the Northern Alberta Radio Club (NARC), as well as individuals in the academic and science community.Bannerman School became the first of several schools in the Edmonton area to adopt a new educational resource using FM radios to detect meteors falling into Earth's atmosphere from space. Antennas and FM receivers were installed at Bannerman and Spruce Avenue schools today making them the first schools to pilot the project.

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