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(meteorobs) ASTRO Fwd Re: Magnitudes of Bright Fireballs
[Message forwarded without permission of the author. - LG]
From: Jan Kucera <kuc@fce.vutbr.cz>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 96 13:27:35 MET
Subject: RE: Magnitudes of Bright Fireballs
> Just out of interest, how good is the correlation between independent
> observations?
I observed meteors for many years as a member of a group devoted to
meteor astronomy. My experience taught me that most observers tend to
compare their estimate of brightness with those of other observers.
It was apparent during national meteor expeditions that observers
from the same local group made similar estimates and the mean values
(for a particular meteor) between various groups differed.
The number of skilled meteor observers who can see the same meteor
is low enough. It is probable that simultaneous observers of a
particular meteor belong (or used to belong) to the same group and
their magnitude estimates are thus not independent. Mechanically
calculated correlation would not be trustful.
I doubt that estimates made by unskilled persons might be useful even
if we use an average of many observers. (As far as magnitude is concerned;
I guess that averaging may be useful for position or maybe speed data.)
- --
Jan Kucera <kuc@fce.vutbr.cz>, Dept. of Computer Science
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical Univ. of Brno, Czechia 16E 49N