The IMO virtual meteor observatory (VMO) : Architectural design

This paper describes the progress on the Virtual Meteor Observatory (VMO), a database which is being developed at ESA/RSSD to store video meteor observations and their derived orbits. The VMO was triggered by a discussion which took place at the first Meteor Orbit Determination (MOD) workshop in Roden, The Netherlands, in September 2006. Representatives of 15 groups working on the determination of meteor orbits and working with the resulting orbits discussed the design and implementation of a database which would combine different meteor orbit datasets. From this the concept of the VMO was born, which will, in the long run, allow accessing meteor observations via the internet. In the beginning, it will focus on meteor orbit data obtained with video systems. This paper presents the architectural design of the database as it has been defined in the meantime.