(meteorobs) Re: Post having trouble getting though

meteors at eclipse.net meteors at eclipse.net
Fri Jul 20 13:23:09 EDT 2007


Man am I a lousy typist when I do it too fast.

that was "hi folks", and "Chris said".

Sheesh :)


> Hi floks, for some reason, Chris has not been able to get this message
> posted, so I thought I'd post it, assuming mine gets through
>
> Elf Wayne::
>
> ===============================
> Crid said:
>
>
> I came up with an interesting idea taking advantage of four
>   technologies:
>
>   1. Laptops for recording meteor observations. Nothing new here;
>   people have been doing this for years.
>   2. Laptop time synchronization with web-based time standards. This is
>   now standard on all laptops.
>   3. Using the web for coordinating the observations of lots of
>   observers. Again, nothing terribly new here.
>   4. Java as a standard language that runs on all platforms.
>
>   When you put these four ideas together, you get something
>   interesting: what if lots of people downloaded the same program and
>   used it to record meteor observations, all time-synched, and then
>   emailed the observation log file to a central location, where they
>   were all processed as a huge statistical database?
>
>   Done properly, this could be used to form a 3-D map of a meteor
>   shower (latitude, longitude, and time). With just a little more
>   effort, we could get a 3D image of the meteor stream that intersected
>   with the earth.
>
>   As far as I know (please somebody, tell me if I have re-invented an
>   old wheel), this hasn't been done before. While it would be
>   interesting to do this with the Perseids next month, the really
>   exciting possibility is the Aurigid outburst. Although viewing the
>   outburst is limited to the West Coast of the USA, this outburst has
>   several aspects that make possible something really big: it's on a
>   Saturday morning on the last long weekend of the summer, meaning that
>   lots of people will be dispersed into the mountains. With some proper
>   Web PR (and I have some connections for getting the ball rolling), we
>   could get THOUSANDS of people contributing. Wouldn't that be peachy-
>   keen?
>
>   I have already written a first draft of the program and designed most
>   of the software. You can find a more detailed description of this
>   idea at:
>
>   http://www.erasmatazz.com/Leonids/WebMeteor/Aurigid.html
>
>   There's still lots of work to be done, and if anybody wants to chip
>   in, I could use the help. And of course, I'll need observers for the
>   dress rehearsal with the Perseids.
>
>   I tried subscribing to this mailing list through the website, but
>   nothing seems to have happened, so please respond directly to me at
>   the email address provided at the URL above.
>
>   Chris Crawford
>
>   ************************************************************************
>   *************
>
>   Any help you could offer me in getting this spread around among the
>   meteor observation community would be much appreciated.
>
>   BTW, what is the conventional wisdom on Peter Jennisken's predicted
>   Aurigid outburst?
>
>   Chris Crawford
>
>
>



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