ASMODEUS is a universal all-sky meteor simulator.
Its original purpose was to determine and correct observation bias introduced by imperfections of all-sky camera systems and to use the corrected data to estimate the total meteoroid flux. Later versions also support evaluation of variable meteoroid properties.
ASMODEUS requires GNU/Linux operating system and a Python interpreter >3.7.
We recommend using pipenv to manage a virtual environment. After cloning the repository
and installing pipenv, run
> pipenv sync
to collect and install correct versions of dependencies from Pipfile.
First of all, you need to generate a population of virtual meteoroids. This is done by running
> ./asmodeus-generate.py <dataset> <meteor-config-file>
Meteor files are saved in datasets/<dataset>/meteors along with the metadata, such as meteoroid count,
timestamp and configuration options used to generate the population.
Once atmospheric entry of each meteoroid is simulated, you need to compute the geometry and luminosity data for ground-based observers. This is done by
> ./asmodeus-observe.py <dataset> <observers-config-file>
using the same <dataset> as before. Sightings are stored in datasets/<dataset>/sightings
along with the used configuration parameters.
For basic analysis of a dataset use
> ./asmodeus-histogram.py <dataset> <analysis-config-file> [--b bias-config-file]
to plot histograms of selected pre-defined properties, or
> ./asmodeus-scatter.py <dataset> <analysis-config-file> [--b bias-config-file]
to plot 2D scatter plots for tuples of properties. You may define properties to be displayed on
the x axis, y axis, colour and dot size.
Each analysis configuration file may contain a set of observational bias parameters, such as the sensitivity of cameras to magnitude, altitude or angular speed of meteors.
Asmodeus includes a simple visualisation tool that plots the meteors as they would be observed in the sky.
> ./asmodeus-sky.py <dataset> <sky-config-file> [--b bias-config-file]
If the observations were calculated with streaks option on, the sky map will contain entire meteors,
otherwise only the brightest frame of each meteor is shown. The sky maps are saved to
datasets/<dataset>/sky/<observer>/sky.png.
ASMODEUS can be used to fit the meteor distributions to another (observational) dataset with
> ./asmodeus-multifit <dataset> <other-dataset> <multifit-config-file>
The program outputs the optimal values of parameters. Currently this is not implemented, but older versions supported this in a limited way.
I would like to thank Juraj Tóth as the advisor of my master thesis, which was the primary reason for this software to be written at all and to Peter Vereš, who suggested using a numerical simulation.