(meteorobs) The value of visual meteor observations
Chris Crawford
chrisc at storytron.com
Fri Jul 27 15:46:31 EDT 2007
This can be a controversial subject. Visual observations were at one
time not long ago the core of meteor astronomy. However, the advent
of video meteor observations has created a challenge to the primacy
of visual observations. Video observations are more reliable and more
consistent than human observations; however, they are still rare and
in many cases are not as sensitive as human observers. There is no
doubt that human observations still retain value. There is lots of
room for furious argument about how quickly video observations will
render human observations useless.
I believe that the usefulness of human observations can be extended
by greater coordination of these observations. Please see my project
plan at http://www.erasmatazz.com/Aurigid/Aurigid.html to see the
kind of thing we can do that still has plenty of utility.
So how are these observations used? Basically, we use meteor
observations to identify meteor streams, measure their strength,
determine their orbits, and associate them with comets. It's the
association with comets that is most useful. The meteor stream is the
debris of the comet's losses due to its exposure to hot sunlight. The
properties of the meteor stream tell us something about the structure
of comets.
There are several other scientific applications of meteors. Multiple
observations of extremely large meteors can help locate any
meteorites that reached the ground. The meteors can also be treated
as probes of the upper atmosphere, although visual observations play
no direct role in this research.
Chris
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