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Re: (meteorobs) Re: ZHR
In a message dated 97-02-20 18:42:50 EST, you write:
<< Hi folks,
it has been a long and busy day for me. Now in the evening I find the
time to read my mail and stumble over a discussion about the aims of
AMS, NAMN and IMO. It has been quite interesting to read what different
amateurs see as their main aim in astronomy. However, some of the things
Jim and Lew say about IMO need some commentation.
Jim writ >>
-------------------
Sirko,
I agree with you 100%. I believe with IMO you get more bang for your
buck(effort in this case). It seems to me that in the education department
I've noticed a lot of articles in Sky and Telescope these recent years by IMO
people...namely Rendtel, Arlt, Brown, Rao and a splashing of others. Just
about every major shower that comes around usually has something written by
an IMO person explaining the methods on how to observe...this includes star
counts for LM's and reminders to not observe in groups and other tips to make
a new observers efforts useful. When I get the WGN journal, I often see
analysis been performed giving credit to those whose data was used. I
believed somebody mentioned that AMS has lots of data stored away and in need
to go thru...if it hasn't been analysed by now I would be very upset if I
was one of the contributors. To discover that my efforts have been
pidgeonholed with little or no feed back would be discouraging to say the
least. I get the impression that data from a select few might have been used
by AMS at best. If the other data isn't good enough to be considered in the
firstplace, what makes you think it will be good on a later date? Anyhow, I
have confidence that as a serious meteor observer, my data is being entered
in a database for usage on a continuing basis when my efforts are submitted
to IMO. I see this in the annual Observation Report series. If any of my data
isn't useable when critiqued for database entry, I should hope it would be
discarded and not stored.
George Zay