(meteorobs) A Visual Observing Question

[pzeller1966]

  I have a question that I've been meaning to throw out to members of this
mailing list. First, to give a little background, I've gotten more and more
interested lately in making scientifically valuable visual observations of
meteor showers; both major and minor showers. I've been reading about the
methods used by the IMO for meteor counts and plotting. However, while
reading through the material available online, I was a little disappointed
to find out that visual observing is discouraged if the limiting magnitude
of the sky is 5.0 or less. Years of amateur astronomy have taught me that
my most transparent skies from my back yard let me see stars as low as 4.5
- 4.8 magnitude with the naked eye. I can very rarely see stars to 5.0 and
my very best, darkest nights have let me see stars to 5.2 magnitude.
However, nights like this are very rare! I've thought about trying to find
a better observing site further from the city lights, but this doesn't help
if the night has moonlight. I guess my question is this ... Can any useful
visual observing be done on nights when the limiting visual magnitude is
4.0 - 4.5 or so? Useful enough to report to the IMO or other groups like
NAMN? All replies are welcome.

  Thanks and good observing to all of you.

  Paul Z.
  Indianapolis IN USA
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