The Team Members Profile's

The Team Members Profile's

Drs. Marco Langbroek (born 15 April 1970) started astronomy as a hobby at age 6 in 1976. In 1980, he joined the Dutch Youth Association for Astronomy and build his first small telescope.
His first serious attempt at observing meteors was during the Perseids of 1986. In 1988, he joined the
Dutch Meteor Society, observing together with Peter Jenniskens at station Meterik untill Peter left for NASA/Ames in late 1992. Invited to participate in the famous campaign on the 1993 Perseids from Rognes, France, he was hooked by team Delphinus. Currently, he and Koen Miskotte are the foremost visual meteor observers of both DMS Delphinus as well as the Netherlands.
In daily life, he is a professional archaeologist, graduated cum laude from Leiden University in
September 1998 on a dissertation about the dispersal and ecological habitat of humankinds earliest ancestors, a dissertation which earned him the prestigeous 'W.A. van Es Prize'.
He is (co-)author of 3 scientific meteor papers: co-author of a paper on the 1995 alfa Monocerotids in
the Astrophysical Journal 479 (1997), 441; co-author of a paper on the Quadrantids in Astronomy & Astrophysics 327 (1997), 1242; and author of a paper on the 1996 Leonids in Meteoritics &
Planetary Science 34 (1999), in press.
Most of his observational hours, usually some 60-70 effective hours per year, are spend in the 'off-season', gathering data on little known streams and hunting for the rare enigmatic meteor outbursts. To date, he has observed 10 meteor outbursts of 6 different meteor streams, including a number of unpredicted events, like the 1996 June Lyrids and 1996 Ursids.
Robert Haas (born 26 January 1964) is a founding members of Delphinus. He started astronomy as a hobby and soon became very interested in astronomical photography. In 1976 he joined the Dutch Youth Association for Astronomy. His first observation of meteors was during the Perseids of 1978 and in 1980 he joined Koen Miskotte (a friend from school) in founding The Delphinus Meteor Observation Team where a selected group of enthousiastic members from the Dutch Youth Association for Astronomy could specialize on observing and recording Meteors The group then existed of 5 members that were regularly observing the major streams together. They spent a lot of time building and developing new camera batteries. The Delphinus team was the first (in 1984) to apply the Canon T70 automated camera's for controlling camera array’s specially for meteor photography
Currently, he and Casper ter Kuile are the foremost innovators of new camera-techniques in the DMS.
In daily life, he is a professional photographer, he graduated in Fotonica at the school for fotonica and photography in 1985.
He is now specialist in the sales of digital video and photographic camera's. Most of his results in observational campaigns are used in the trajectory results of the DMS research and publications.
He made it a sport gathering photographic data from the rare enigmatic meteor outbursts, and then drives the team for hundreds of miles to get to a clear weather spot.
He has observed and photographed several meteor outbursts of different meteor streams, including the Perseids 1993, the alfa Monocerotids in 1995 and the Leonids in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Koen Miskotte (born 15 October 1962) the founding member of Delphinus, was the first of a group of friends who was getting interrested in observing meteors in 1977.
His first observations on record date from 1978.
The name Delphinus originated from the nearby world famous Dolphinarium in the town of Harderwijk.
The group observed from the roof of an old watertower in the woods nearby the town untill 1992.
The objectif of the group Delphinus is to make meteor observations every clear night the whole year through regardless of activity of major meteor streams.
A confectioner in daily life, he is interrested in meteors, photograpy and symponic and heavy-metal rock music (Rush, Arena,Dream Theater, Irion Maiden and Metallica). Koen was the driving force behind the team Delphinus in the years 1980-1992.
With Casper and Marco joining the team in 1993, the team efforts were more divided among the members.
He is the foremost active visual observer in the Netherlands,(and the Benelux countries), sometimes spending as much as 150 effective hours per year observing Meteors.
He has a record of observing over 30.000 meteors.
He has some practice of 'getting a few hours of data' before he departs for the bakery early in the morning. Like Marco, he is especially keen in tracking down meteor outburst phenomenon, of which he observed 10 over the last years, including a number of totaly unpredicted events (like the Canis minorids 1993 and the Orionids 1993). From 1980-1995 he was highly involved in the boulding and development of new camera arrays for meteor photography. Sinds 1996 Robert has taken over this effort so that Koen now is able to fully devote his efforts to visual observing.
Ing. Casper ter Kuile (born 12 September 1954) started astronomy as a hobby at age 12 in 1966. The first meteor shower he observed was the Orionid shower in 1971, from a camper near Hengelo in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The intensification of his activities in this field came with the Lyrids in 1972, followed by the famous Perseids of 1972 when he and his friends set up a camp for two weeks at the Public Observatory of Mr. Henny Gosemeyer in Denekamp, also in Twente. This camp was part of a nationally coordinated observing campaign of the Meteor Section of the Dutch Association for Astronomy and Meteorology. Following this, Casper stopped for a couple of years with meteor observations.

He restarted again when the Hengelo Association for Astronomy (HASA) started to organise meteor observing camps from 1978 onwards at the observatory of Mr. Eindhoven near Buurse, at the German Border south of Enschede.The Perseids 1978 marked the beginning of a very profitable cooperation
between the HASA, the observatory of mr. Eindhoven at Buurse and the Dutch Meteor Society which was founded by Hans Betlem in april 1978. The meteor group "Buurse" also had very frequent contacts with the meteor observing groups "WVS" at Denekamp and "Delphinus" at Harderwijk. In Buurse Casper
ter Kuile coordinated the photographic obervations and the contacts with the DMS and other observing groups mentioned above. Marked highlights of this period were the Perseids of 1980, 1982, 1983,
1985, 1986, the Lyrids and Orionids in 1984, and some other showers.

Then, in 1988 the team stopped observations in Buurse and the Perseids were then observed from Langeveen in the upper North-Eastern part of Twente.
In 1989 Casper observed the Perseids for about two weeks together with Peter Jenniskens, at the farm of Peter's parents in Meterik which is in the Province of Limburg in the southern part of the Netherlands.

In december 1990 a first expedition was organised by Marc de Lignie, Peter Jenniskens and Casper ter Kuile to southern France to observe the Geminids.This expedition was very succesfull, with many hundreds of photographed meteors and hundreds of visual observations.
In 1991 observations were carried out in collaboration with Carl Johannink of the "WVS" at the Youth Hostel "the Brecklenkamp" where the IMC'83 has been organised by the "WVS". In 1992 observations were performed from VST-Lattrop Public Observatory too. This year marked the birth of the well known (and notorious) "crash" campaigns.
On August 11/12, 1992, the first Dutch observations of a Perseid outburst were conducted by Peter Jenniskens, Marco Langbroek, Carl Johannink, Romke Schievink and Casper ter Kuile from Basel,Switzerland. In a desperate move, the team had decided to flee from the clouded Netherlands on the
day of the outburst, driving hundreds of kilometers due south, to Basel. In august 1993 we organised our second big expedition to Southern France, to observe yet another Perseid outburst. This expedition too turned out to be highly succesfull with many hundreds of photographed meteors and hundresd of visual observations. Like for Marco, this campaign initiated the close cooperation with Koen and Robert and saw the birth of the modern Delphinus team.

From 1993 onwards Casper ter Kuile joined group Delphinus permanently, as did Marco. The team now
observed from the now well known location "Biddinghuizen" at the farm of the Appel family, in the
extremely dark polder landscape in the center of the Netherlands.

Some remarkable highlights during the period 1994 - 1998 are: the Leonid /alfa Monocerotid expedition the Andalucia, Spain in November 1995, the"crash" expedition in november 1996 to observe the Leonids from
Woignarue, France (during this campaign the team detected the first certain occurrence of a narrow secundary activity structure in the (outburst stream) and the all time high Sino-Dutch Leonid Expedition 1998 to China which is our most succesfull meteor campaign ever, and probably one of the best and
most succesfull meteor observing expeditions ever organised worldwide.
In daily life, he is a professional IT-engineer at the Laboratory of Radiation Research of the National Institute on Public Health and Environmental Care at Bilthoven near Utrecht, in the center of the Netherlands
Casper ter Kuile is co-auther of a number of publications on meteor astronomy.
1 Three-Station Photographic Observations of the 1990 Geminid Meteor Shower. In Stohl and Williams (eds.): Meteoroids and their Parent Bodies, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Symposium at Smolenice, Slovakia 1992 p. 161-163
2 Orbits of meteorite producing fireballs: the Glanerbrug - a case study. Astronomy & Astrophysics 255 (1992) p. 373-376
3.The Glanerbrug meteorite fall. Publications of the Astronomical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences 79 (1992) p. 1-17
4. Precisely reduced meteoroid trajectories and orbits from the 1995 Leonid meteor outburst. PDF (100 kB) Planetary and Space Science Elsevier Science Ltd.
5 Precision meteor orbits obtained by the Dutch Meteor Society Photographic Meteor Survey (1981 - 1993). PDF (260 kB),Astronomy & Astrophysics - Supplement series 128 179-185 (1998)