(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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