(meteorobs) Two questions for meteorobs members
Skywayinc at aol.com
Skywayinc at aol.com
Wed Jul 28 10:30:51 EDT 2010
QUESTION 1:
When or who started naming meteors showers by the constellation patronym?
The meteors from Perseus are ‘offspring’ or ‘descendents’ (literally!)
from there. So they are the Perseides, or Perseids in English. This was the
practice at least thru the 20th century but with showers recognized by the
mid 19th I should think one of the early astronomers back then started
with these names.
QUESTION 2:
Are the V(infinity) speeds of meteors corrected for the Earth’s gravity?
The speed would be, by the time we see the shooting star have a downward
component of 11km/s due to falling by gravity. This is in addition to the
vector combination of the orbital motions of the meteor and Earth.
How is the gravity vector treated. Its direction varies with location of
the observer on Earth. Is it by convention the vector for the radiant in
the zenith, parallel to the meteor-Earth vectors?
-- joe rao
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