(meteorobs) Handbook for Visual Meteor Observers

Malcolm J. Currie mjc at star.rl.ac.uk
Wed Mar 23 12:15:45 EST 2005


There is Neil Bone's book (Sky Publishing), which may have deterred
interest.  It does have lots of useful background and basic techniques,
and a meteor-shower diary.  IIRC it excludes visual plotting and the
shower information is based upon BAA data, hence doesn't have the time
resolution and volume of IMO analyses.  Still it's a book all meteor
observers should have.  Neil did tell me in the mid-1990s that there
could be an updated version post the Leonid years.

Another reason is that there is the Handbook for Visual Meteor Observers
owned by many observers.

Still given all the discoveries made by amateurs in recent years, there
ought to be a market for an up-to-date popular meteor book.

On "Observatonal Astronomy for Amateurs", if that's the Sidgwick book,
then the methods are very old, although some of the methods for visual
plotting are good.  They were used successfully by expert observers such
as Prentice and Alcock.

Malcolm Currie


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