(meteorobs) Handbook for Visual Meteor Observers

Bias, Peter V pbias at flsouthern.edu
Mon Mar 28 14:19:08 EST 2005


Hi all,

There have been quite a few inquiries about the book, so I thought I
would let everyone know what is going on. 
 
I have put together a meteor book that is for amateurs, a little like
Neil Bone's nice little meteor book.  However, I have only one chapter
devoted solely to meteor showers, and it covers only the main meteor
showers such as Perseids, Geminids, Leonids, Taurids, etc.  The rest of
the book tries to explain some things that I didn't truly understand for
a long time; things like gradual radiant shifts, changing meteor rates
as the radiant rises, radiant position relative to the real location of
the meteors in space, formation of dust trails, solar radiation impacts
on meteoroids, forecasting meteor shower strength, and lots of others.
Most of these topics are not in Bone's book, nor in Gary Kronk's or Mark
Littmann's. In fact, it is almost like a compendium of topics that all
of these books leave out but are nevertheless interesting or new.  
Because people that are part of this forum are generally very
knowledgeable about meteors (some professionals, receive WGN, are
math-oriented, etc.), it is possible that some (most?) will not benefit
much from the book, I really don't know; but newer amateurs will
probably get a large amount of information that would be difficult to
quickly pull together.
There is a little math, but mostly a lot of diagrams to try to really
explain the topics.

In answer to some of the other questions:  No, I did not try Sky
Publishing out of regard for Neil Bone and the fact that the book is
somewhat (although really not much) like his.  Because my book is so
different than Gary Kronk's excellent book, I did try his publisher,
Enslow, but was rejected.  Several other publishers also rejected the
book.

I will ultimately publish the book on-demand.  Clearly I won't make any
money on it (that never was an issue); in fact, it will probably cost me
a few hundred dollars to get it out there.  Still, I learned a lot and
really enjoyed putting it together. I think it will be beneficial to
many amateurs trying to learn more about meteors and meteor showers.

  Pete Bias, (economist, not astronomer)
  Florida Southern College
  Lakeland Florida   USA




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