Unified python script for calibration and processing of meteor spectra

In my previous post meteor-spectroscopy-python-scripts-on-github I have presented two scripts. One for the laser calibration of meteor spectra, which determines the parameters for the orthographic transformation, which is used to linearize meteor spectra. The other script was used for the processing of meteor spectra. These scripts have now been combined into a single script which is used for laser calibration of the equipment and also for the processing of meteor spectra from the video file to the finished calibrated and plotted spectrum. The new script and additional files for using and testing the script have been uploaded to Github for free use for everybody. They are copyrighted with a free MIT license and can be downloaded from https://github.com/meteorspectroscopy/meteor-spectrum-calibration

Laser calibration

For the laser calibration you have to set the instrument parameters, load a calibration image, measure the lines in each spectrum and do a least square fit of the measured lines positions. This gives the parameters for the orthographic transformation of the meteor spectra images:

Meteor spectra processing

With these transformation parameters meteor spectra can be processed, with the following steps:

• extract series of meteor spectra from video files
• apply background correction
• apply transformation to orthographic projection
• register and stack meteor spectra
• apply tilt and slant correction to spectra
• add rows to convert 2-D spectrum to uncalibrated raw spectrum
• calibrate spectrum with at least one known spectral line
• plot calibrated spectrum

The final result can be plotted and saved as a spectrum in *.dat format or as a PNG image:

More details of the processing are described in a previous post:
meteor spectra analysis, new version
A detailed manual you find on github: M_spec Python manual.pdf
Try it out! If you have a question, do not hesitate to ask.