(meteorobs) NASA Meteor Observing App

[dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de]

> millions of people are walking around with smart
> phones. [...] data from a digital counter is instantly
> consolidated with that of many other observers, and requires no manual
> processing to extract time, magnitude, and possibly other information.

There have been several(!) attempts to popularize such approaches in
earlier 'eras' of electronics, from home-made contraptions with buttons to
press for each meteor to software running on laptops where one hits some
keys blindly to register a meteor (saw one of the latter installations in
action during the AUR campaign in the U.S. in 2007) - has anything useful
ever come out of this? And why would things now be better?

Back then, these systems were tried out mainly by experienced observers,
now most everyone could happily fill up the database with noise. An app
for blind use would still be a major improvement over campaigns where
people are asked to compose a tweet for every meteor they saw, but how
would one decide which data to keep and which to discard? I've been hoping
for a near-real-time visual-ZHR-generating system for years, but is this
the solution?

Dan