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Re: (meteorobs) Fireballs and Tigers and Bears

In a message dated 97-04-16 06:03:45 EDT, Jim Biedent wrote:

<< 
 Thanks Jim Richardson for doing a fine job of articulating what I was
 thinking.  I just want to make a comment or two on the topic of fireball
 reporting.  I've placed the fireball forms on the AMS web site to make a
 start at getting us back into the fireball business.  At the present, that's
 the sum total of the fireball program, collecting some reports, placing them
 on our "Bright Meteor Diary" page, archiving them appropriately, and
 submitting a report for our annual report.  Dr. Getman, who has had an
 association with Dr. Meisel, is not yet formally associated with AMS, so we
 are operating on a fairly small scale at present.  We do not have the
 resources at present to deal with fireballs as we did for the first 60 years
 or so of our history.<<

Don't you think AMS might ought to concentrate on going thru "all those boxes
of data with many thousands of reports to sift thru" before accumulating more
to be stored in boxes? This was brought up quite a bit last year in
discussions here. I sure wouldn't want to send my data to AMS knowing that
it's destined for a box waiting for someone to maybe some year process it. Or
is just the new material going to be processed and all those years of old
data will still be waiting for someone to come along and do it? Or has it
been done already?
 
>> I would definately discourage multiple reports.  Report to one body only,
 that's plenty; it may save confusion for some poor researcher many years
 down the road.  Quite frankly, since I don't feel as some do here that this
 is some kind of a contest, I say report 'em to whoever you want.  Except in
 the case of an extraordinary event like the Peekskill fall a couple of years
 back, not much will happen to them anyway.  Let's face it, for all its
 puffery, there isn't any real scientific value to the FIDAC digests.  For
 the matter, my own "Bright Meteor Diary" is just a sort of gee-whiz thing.
 <<

Yes multiple reports may cause a little confusion for some particularly if
not processed in a timely manner...but Andre has been quite up on all the
reports and have been doing quite a good job. To get a global picture...IMO
is still the best place to send the reports. Out of curiosity Jim, in what
way will AMS Fireball reporting be different from the FIDAC digests that will
make them of scientific value? I know that the Fireball reporting in FIDAC
news is a lot better of a job than AMS's fractured fireball reports in Meteor
News. What kind of information would AMS have that IMO won't to make the
difference?
 
 George Zay