(meteorobs) Visual meteor reporting in real-time, was Re: The Moonlit Perseids

[dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de]

> I have no idea how you could provide a
> real-time representation of what was going on in the sky without
> corrupting the process of observation. Recording my obs on a voice
> recorder while continuously monitoring the sky in the dark is one thing;
> turning on a screen for a number of seconds while I type a tweet is
> something else entirely.

The only way I could imaginge to 'feed' real-time visual observations into
some online tool would be to use one of those laptop set-ups promoted in
recent years where you hit a certain key whenever you see a meteor; this
info is normally stored locally but could be fed into a centralized system
via cell phone link. To arrive at anything remotely as reliable as the IMO
'real-time' analysis (which is typically 12 hours behind, since the
observers have to come home and enter the forms) all the relevant factors
like limiting magnitude and cloud obstruction would have to be entered as
well, of course. Wonder if that has ever been tried?*) The Draconids
burst-or-bust event in October would be a nice testbed: Since we've never
been that confused before a potential meteor outburst, a reliable
real-time system would be nice for those who can't watch themselves (wrong
longitude or weather), news media and astronomy bloggers eager for 'the
outcome' included ...

Dan

*) During the 2001 Leonids campaign there *was* such a system in
operation; see the screenshots in
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/leo2001 - the display was fun to
follow (from a Korean observatory, waiting for the 2nd peak) but sometimes
showed strange results.