(meteorobs) Meteor Observation Tracking Tool Beta

Luc Bastiaens lba at urania.be
Sun Aug 7 13:41:19 EDT 2005


> I just want to make sure people understand that my Meteor Observing
> Tracking Tool is one for personal use. IT IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO REPLACE
> OR COMPETE WITH THE IMO OR OTHER ORGANIZATIONS!  I want to keep my own
> records, make them accessible online, and eventually (soon I hope) use
> the tool to submit my own reports to these official organizations. I
> will update my webpages to more clearly state that purpose.

Maybe you should also check Ivan Goethals' Meteor Companion (
http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~igoethal/metcomp.htm ).  It's not an
online tool, but works great to process observations into e.g. the IMO
summary reports.

Furthermore, there actually is a lot moving on this subject.  Geert
Barentsen is doing a _lot_ of work on getting a so-called 'Unified Meteor
Database' on the tracks.  I didn't follow very closely, but as far as I
know, most work was put into the design of the database backend (with
support for different kind of observations (e.g. visual summary reports,
visual detailed reports (e.g. plottings), telescopic observations, even
photo or video observations) and the interfaces around it.  It uses a SOAP
server where XML-formatted observations can be submitted from basically
anywhere on the web (e.g. also Al's personal interface).  I don't think it
needs mentioning that all interfaces will be completely open, so that
everybody who wants to feed observations into it can do so.  Last time I
checked, Geert used mainly a web-based tool derived from Ivan's Meteor
Companion as input.

The submitted observations go trough a rather extensive set of semantical
and syntactical checks (giving immediate feedback to the observer) before
it goes into the database.  Once accepted by the automated checks, it goes
into the moderation queue for a last check by someone like e.g. Rainer who
will give the final go to include the observation into the real DB.

Also included are some processing modules, which allow extracting e.g. ZHR
profiles for certain dates and showers.

He is currently test-driving a prototype on the astronomical camp of our
observatory (and took the server with him, so you can't see it now).

He will present his work at the IMC here in Belgium in September.  From
what I read in the earlier meteorobs-mails on this subject, it looks like
there is quite some interest from the community...

However, keep in mind that this system is still under permanent
development, improvement and testing before it's ready to be widely used. 
So, don't expect it to be ready tomorrow, but hopefully the near future
will have very nice things in store on the data-gathering and processing
front...

The first 'spin-off' of the UMDB will be the online summary report form on
the new IMO website, which will already have quite some of the checks
mentioned earlier on.  The new website will be going live later this month
and, as a kind of launch-party, I will also give a short presentation
about it on the IMC.

Hope to see you all there!

Cheers,
Luc


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