The VMO file format. I. Reduced camera meteor and orbit data

We propose a standard file format for storing and transferring reduced science data from photographic and video meteor observations and the associated meteoroid orbits and trajectories. The format is a result of discussions in the Virtual Meteor Observatory (VMO) team, which aims to facilitate collaboration in the meteor science community and to the greater scientific impact of combined observational data. The proposed format is extensible and allows meteoroid orbits and trajectories to be traced back to the original observing data and processing steps. We provide a description of the structure of the data format and give precise definitions for each data field.