(meteorobs) RE: Question about radiant drift

[David Entwistle]

In message <cargo6+an44 at eGroups.com>, Bamm Gabriana
<bamm at upastrosoc.org> writes
>
>Thanks for replying. I'm not looking for the values, I'm looking for 
>the formulas so I can compute them on my own.
>
>Regards,
>Bamm

Hello Bamm,

I've put an illustration of how I think you'd perform the radiant-drift
calculation on my web site. You can get there from the following link:

http://www.d-entwistle.fsnet.co.uk

I couldn't find any reference work detailing a method, although I'm sure
they do exist. My analysis isn't mathematically rigorous, but the
results look reasonable for a first pass. There's certainly plenty of
room for improvement. Particular areas for work further work include

I've treated the earth's orbit as a circle, not an ellipse.
I've arrived at approximate solution to the vector calculations
graphically and not algebraically.
I've measured the various angles on sky charting software rather than
performing the necessary great-circle calculations to derive them.

I think I we can arrive at more rigorous solutions to the above if we
spend some time on them. It's an interesting exercise in may ways...
-- 
David Entwistle