European Meteor Monitoring and the EDMOND Database

Through extensive international collaboration, meteor activity is now monitored across nearly all of Europe. This cooperation has led to the accumulation of substantial observational data. As of the latest update, the EDMOND database encompasses 7,462,700 individual meteor records collected between 2000 and 2023. Among these, 978,006 multi-station detections have been used to compute initial "Q0" orbits. The most recent release, version 5.05 (December 2023), includes 480,190 refined orbits derived from observations spanning 2001 to 2023.

Orbit calculations within EDMOND are performed using UFOOrbit v2.52, a tool compatible with data in the UFO format. Data obtained via MetRec software require conversion to this format using SonotaCo's INF2MCSV utility. In UFOOrbit v2.52, meteor pairs observed within a time interval of less than 5 seconds are flagged as Q0 orbits, provided they meet specific criteria outlined in the UFOOrbit Manual:

  • dur > 0.1 s (meteor duration)
  • dt < 5 s (max time difference between stations)
  • GD < 10 km (min ground distance between stations)
  • Gm% > –100% (overlap of sightings)
  • 15 km < H1 < 200 km (beginning height)
  • H2 < 200 km (terminal height)
  • QA > 0.15 (empirical quality parameter [0–1])
  • dV < 7 km/s (max velocity difference)

The last condition (7 km/s) is a key tightening versus earlier versions (≈10% of max bound‐object geocentric velocity), eliminating most false meteors. UFOOrbit outputs preliminary orbits per station plus a mean “unified” orbit. To reject remaining low-quality orbits, a second filter is applied (Kornoš et al. 2013):

  • Q0 > 1.0° (observed trajectory angle)
  • Qc > 10° (convergence angle)
  • dGP < 0.5° (pole-pole distance)
  • dv12% < 7.07% (velocity difference vs. unified orbit)
YEAR SINGLE METEORS PAIRED METEORS RAW ORBITS STATIONS/ORBIT EDMOND ORBITS REDUCTION (%)
2000 4,154 0 0 0.000 0 0.00
2001 25,365 761 371 2.045 222 59.84
2002 20,499 210 105 2.000 68 64.76
2003 31,136 390 191 2.067 105 54.97
2004 23,085 109 52 2.057 35 67.31
2005 36,204 257 128 2.014 69 53.91
2006 63,723 2,564 1,268 2.008 359 28.31
2007 92,026 9,859 4,781 2.065 2,043 42.73
2008 163,817 19,813 9,419 2.161 4,639 49.25
2009 230,153 33,537 15,922 2.164 6,540 41.08
2010 366,007 76,716 34,697 2.308 19,619 56.54
2011 537,090 145,522 63,525 2.331 30,624 48.21
2012 422,961 133,306 59,734 2.340 28,504 47.72
2013 501,582 158,913 70,261 2.368 36,212 51.54
2014 587,093 178,225 80,602 2.284 40,195 49.87
2015 728,203 240,145 104,991 2.391 52,851 50.34
2016 822,542 302,814 133,199 2.289 67,427 50.62
2017 670,323 222,374 96,549 2.422 45,032 46.64
2018 639,771 218,384 94,242 2.441 46,106 48.92
2019 615,676 188,641 82,538 2.338 38,324 46.43
2020 235,900 90,872 39,721 2.393 18,763 47.24
2021 195,108 66,070 29,188 2.355 12,954 44.38
2022 231,053 58,196 25,497 2.384 11,912 46.72
2023 219,229 72,447 31,025 2.493 17,587 56.69
OVERALL 7,462,700 2,217,125 978,006 2.358 480,190 49.10

The EDMOND v5.05 database (per Kornoš et al. 2014a,b) contains orbital elements and geophysical data for 480,190 meteors from 2001 to 2023 (last update 6 December 2023). The database is available in CSV format.

Recent EDMOND Database to Download

YEAR 2D Ground Map Database CSV File
2001 2001 Ground Map U2_2001_EDM.zip
2002 2002 Ground Map U2_2002_EDM.zip
2003 2003 Ground Map U2_2003_EDM.zip
2004 2004 Ground Map U2_2004_EDM.zip
2005 2005 Ground Map U2_2005_EDM.zip
2006 2006 Ground Map U2_2006_EDM.zip
2007 2007 Ground Map U2_2007_EDM.zip
2008 2008 Ground Map U2_2008_EDM.zip
2009 2009 Ground Map U2_2009_EDM.zip
2010 2010 Ground Map U2_2010_EDM.zip
2011 2011 Ground Map U2_2011_EDM.zip
2012 2012 Ground Map U2_2012_EDM.zip
2013 2013 Ground Map U2_2013_EDM.zip
2014 2014 Ground Map 2014 BRAMON Ground Map U2_2014_EDM.zip
2015 2015 Ground Map 2015 BRAMON Ground Map U2_2015_EDM.zip
2016 2016 Ground Map 2016 BRAMON Ground Map U2_2016_EDM.zip
2017 2017 Ground Map 2017 BRAMON Ground Map U2_2017_EDM.zip
2018 2018 Ground Map U2_2018_EDM.zip
2019 2019 Ground Map U2_2019_EDM.zip
2020 2020 Ground Map U2_2020_EDM.zip
2021 2021 Ground Map U2_2021_EDM.zip
2022 2022 Ground Map U2_2022_EDM.zip
2023 2023 Ground Map U2_2023_EDM.zip
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