Winter temperatures of down to -65 degrees, raging storms with wind speeds of more than 250 km/h and millions of penguins – this is Antarctica. This is where O'Higgins, the German Antarctic Receiving Station, is located. It was founded in 1991 by the German Aerospace Center and the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy to collect data from geographical satellites and stars. Mobotix cam...
Winter temperatures of down to -65 degrees, raging storms with wind speeds of more than 250 km/h and millions of penguins – this is Antarctica. This is where O'Higgins, the German Antarctic Receiving Station, is located. It was founded in 1991 by the German Aerospace Center and the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy to collect data from geographical satellites and stars. Mobotix cameras monitor the radio telescope to make sure that it continues to function properly – and these cameras are now in their tenth year. It all started with model, and now four day/night cameras and a camera are in use. No problems have been recorded so far – even under the world's most extreme weather conditions. The Mobotix solution: The cameras work without heating or ventilation and consume only three to four watts of electricity. They can also be installed in areas where power is rare. A traditional camera with heating would consume around 40 watts, making it unsuitable for use under these conditions. The decentralized processing and storage in the Mobotix camera also reduce the required bandwidth to a minimum and significantly cut system costs. The PC or the video control center is required only to view and control the cameras (PTZ), but not to evaluate and record.
For the German Antarctic Receiving Station, it is extremely important to ensure that the radio telescope is working properly. For this reason, the telescope was initially monitored with an analog camera, but the camera was only able to deliver good results when there was sufficient light and visibility. The switch to the camera from Mobotix in 2003 meant an investment in a digital outdoor system. The camera was installed at a sheltered spot of the station's outside wall where it has to resist temperatures ranging from 10 degrees down to -30 degrees – and sometimes lower – as well as storms with wind speeds of up to 250 km/h. The camera is integrated into the station's LAN and provides real-time images on this subnet. In order to save transfer capacity, current images are sent about every ten minutes via satellite to the Internet. Over the course of the years, the system was expanded to include additional Mobotix cameras: two cameras monitor the area around the station and two additional cameras film the penguins.