(meteorobs) Aurigid analysis

[Chris Peterson]

Well, "ZHR" still makes sense, but I don't think my calculation in this 
case accurately describes reality. The standard ZHR calculation accounts 
for the magnitude distribution of the shower meteors. I used a value 
presented by Jenniskens in 1994 (maybe that has been revised... I didn't 
check), but the value isn't consistent with what has been reported for 
this year's shower, which seems heavily weighted towards brighter 
events. That's why I suggested that the value shouldn't be taken very 
seriously. The actual activity distribution plot, combined with the fact 
that the camera sensitivity is just shy of magnitude 2, provides much 
more useful information about the shower behavior.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alister" <aling at telus.net>
To: "Global Meteor Observing Forum" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 2:35 PM
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) Aurigid analysis


> Indeed, nice work on the report.
>
>>> clear. The corrected peak ZHR works out to around 3000, although I 
>>> don't know how meaningful that is when peaks are very narrow. 
>>> Another measure was that the cameras detected about 50 meteors 
>>> brighter than mag 2 during the one hour of significant activity.
>
> I apologize if this is a triannual question: "Does ZHR" makes sense if 
> the population is skewed heavily into the negative magnitudes? The ZHR 
> I thought was based on greater and greater numbers of fainter meteors. 
> So a decent number of bright meteors implies a huge number of fainter 
> ones. If the population of this stream is not typical, then a 
> calculated ZHR could be very misleading.
>
> Good observing,
> Alister Ling
> Edmonton, Alberta.