(meteorobs) Bright Meteor Over El Paso, TX

Wayne Watson sierra_mtnview at earthlink.net
Sat Nov 5 00:32:03 EST 2005


Hi, Jim. Well, that's good to hear. Yes, I'd be interested in your 
methodology. I started thinking about methods to do this today, and how they 
could be implemented directly into the Sentinel code. A fellow in Ontario 
uses Iridium to calibrate. It seems to me other choices, are some of the 
brighter objects in the sky, the moon (as you suggested), Venus, Jupiter, 
Sirius, etc., but, hey, 0.01 accuracy sounds good.

Now that I've gotten the software back on its feet, I can start thinking 
about improvements and features to it. The rt linux kernel build was the 
culprit in getting me back up after my h/w took a bad crash last February. 
The kernel build, as I suspected, had an errant problem in the Makefile. It 
was discovered in late August after I took 'extreme' measures to finally 
find it. (Another fellow, with fresher Linux skills than mine, and I beat it 
to death over a weekend.) The developers of rtlinux now understand my 
complaint and made the necessary change in their distribution. Yea! :-) 
Those 6 or so months were really frustrating. Anyway, I'm back in action.

I see your next post mentions Tom, but ... Ahhh, I see the message. I'll 
take a look.

Jim Gamble wrote:

> Hi Wayne, I calibrated Sentinel on a full moon (known value of -12.7). An
> amplitude number is generated and that serves as the base for an Excel
> formula. I've compared my values with that of a Sandia camera calibrated
> with a photometer and am within .01 mag so event brightness using the
> "moon method" is accurate. Hope this helps. BTW Ernie Iverson in L.A.
> uses the same methodology. I can send the Excel chart of this event to
> your e-mail if you'd like to see it. Regards, Jim Gamble --- Mailing list
> meteorobs meteorobs at meteorobs.org 
> http://lists.meteorobs.org/mailman/listinfo/meteorobs
> 
> 

-- 
          Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
              (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
               Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

              "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
                 -- Carl Sagan

                     Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>



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