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Re: (meteorobs) Meteor Positions
Um! The initial comment on trains was something of a "throwaway", but
date back to a week-long observing camp held in rural England about
ten years back, when novice and other observers were encouraged to
record constellation. When we looked at the train data, we found - as
I'd already nted empirically - that events in constellations in the
twilit side of the sky tended to leave, on average, longer-duration
trains. Admittedly the binning is crude, but - as others have rightly
observed - it' possible to improve things by noting the nearest star,
or whatevr - so instead of just saying UMa, one might record (as I
often do!) Alpha/Beta UMa, for example. Given records in this latter
frm, the analyst would certainly be able to arrive at rough Alt-az
co-ordinates. As with all these thing, beware of placing too much
emphasis on precision - meteor observing is quite a precise art, but
there's a danger in over-cooking the figures from what is perhaps 50%
impression:50% absolute reality...
NB
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