(meteorobs) Fireball in Texas

[Matson, Robert D.]

Hi Mike,

Yes -- it shows the merit in averaging the reported times!  I wonder if
the standard deviation improves at all with the witness's self-reported
experience level?  If I go to level 3 and higher, there are 28 reports,
with times varying from 12:37 to 13:45 (!).  (Obviously the 13:45
witness
entered the wrong timezone.)  Even discarding the bad 13:45 time,
another
level-3 witness reported the time as 13:25 -- off by 42 minutes.

There are only two witnesses out of the 104, both level 1, whose
red terminus vectors triangulate to the actual location of the fall.
They deserve gold stars.  :-)  --Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org
[mailto:meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org] On Behalf Of Mike Hankey
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 2:47 PM
To: Meteor science and meteor observing
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) Fireball in Texas

Hey Rob,

Great work again with the Galactic Analytics find.

While its unfortunate that human beings can't determine the fall time as
well as a doppler radar, the average time for the fall calculated from
the witness reports is: 2012-12-07 12:44 UTC

Off by less than a minute :)

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_event (see avg UTC column for event
2085)

Now you bring up an interesting concept with regard to scoring each
witness account based on their ability to accurately tell and report
time. I'll have to think about this more.

Thanks,

Mike