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(meteorobs) Recording - sound & colour

Greetings -

I've been enjoying the rather humourous comments about tape recorders and colour
perception :)

I debated whether to take a larger tape recorder out with me (my table model
with regular size tapes and 4C batteries) or my mini-recorder (with mini tapes
and 2 AA batteries).  Where I observe, I don't have the luxury of plug-in power.
Although the bigger recorder probably had more battery power, I decided on the
small one as I could keep it warmer under the sleeping bag, tucked close to body
parts.  (As it isn't that cold up here yet, no body parts were lost to
temperature - good thing, too - we don't have that 1-800 number to call :)
However, I also took along a little pouch with lots of  spare AA batteries - and
kept it tucked warm close to body parts as well.  

The little recorder is easier to rescue from under the depths of the sleeping
bag when you want to record - it's lightweight, can be held in one hand, and you
can put it closer to your mouth to record.  I originally put it on 'voice
activated' to save button pressing, but found I had to put it back on normal
when it kept staying on due to the rustling of my heavy silver survival blanket
that I'd covered myself with.  

A comment here for Jonathan - you don't need a tape recorder if you don't have
one handy.  I also took along with me a clipboard with recording sheets - with a
pencil attached to it on a string.  Just wear warm gloves or mittens.  In the
real dead of winter, a tape recorder's batteries can go dead on you.

Change of topic here - from sound to colour perception.  I am always amazed at
the colours others see that I don't.  Most of my Leonids were white.  I called
several yellow.  For me to see colour in the night sky, it has to be really
intense.

I see just about all aurora as white or pale green.  The most colourful aurora
I've seen in my life was the night of July lst , 1974.  I'd just gotten back
from a month in Finland - with a camera within 10 feet of me at all times.  I
was at a party at a friend's place, got a weird feeling that I should go outside
- and the sky let loose with a brilliant shocking pink and vivid purple aurora.
This was visible from the city.  No camera.  All of us were lying outside on the
ground going crazy...  That was colour.

I can just about remember on my fingers  each of the coloured meteors I've seen
over the years - an intense slow red one dribbling parallel to the horizon for
30 or so degrees, a brilliant gold fireball that burst, died, and then exploded
in a shower of individual pieces that I could see falling down, and several
blue-green meteors down my (untinted) windshield while driving.  I have never
seen an orange meteor in my life.  

Could meteor colour perception be quantified?  Interesting question.  I don't
think so.  Everyone's perception is different.  You could test a person's colour
perception ahead of time, but I don't think you could relate it to meteor
colour.  And - I don't know how a person's daytime colour perception would
relate to their nighttime colour perception, when their eyes are not 'stopped
down' as much, due to lower light levels.  

I actually think about colour a lot, and how it relates to other things in
nature, and astronomy.  There was a vivid fuchsia flower bed outside my office
building this past summer, and every time I walked by it, my first thought was
...  I wonder how an octopus would see a comet !! ... and you wondered what
wavelength I was on....

So much for perception... I tend to see things in a different light  :)

- Cathy
  Great White North