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Re: (meteorobs) Plotting During Major Showers
>Not all yet...sometimes the brain can't find the reference stars on the charts
>before the stored details start to leak out my ears :-)
You've got a good point there, Wayne. I find that two meteors, recorded some
times as much as four minutes apart, are sometimes all it takes to make me lose
the plotting info on the first one. As I think I mentioned in a previous post,
this only happens when the meteors are well-spaced! If they occur close together
(within the same minute), or if the first happens to have a path that's really
easy to remember, I have no problems. Somehow, my brain just stows the data for
that first meteor in a compartment somewhere.
I only count about 45 seconds per plotted meteor as "dead time" (time with my
eyes off the sky). But the actual time spent recording the non-plot info (esp.
listening for or checking the time), noting nearby star patterns and distances,
and then getting flashlight and pen in hand without looking is a whole lot more!
If a meteor happens while this long process is going on, some kind of cognitive
dissonance occurs, I get flustered, and that first meteor becomes a no-plot. :(
I think this decreases with time and practice, but somehow it feels like a sort
of a mental fundamental to me. Anybody else just learning the delicate art of
meteor plotting (or who already knows it!), who has similar experiences?
Lew
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