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(meteorobs) Hello meteorobs



Having lurked for a few weeks, it's time to sat hello ... 
apologies for the lengthy post; I won't make a habit of it !

I'm probably the least experienced observer on this list; 
my only attempt at observing meteors was *years* ago, when 
I lived in west UK, an area with reasonably dark skies, 
when I tried to spot some Perseids. I remember being
rather disappointed by having to wait five or ten minutes at
a time to see one ...

Since then I've maintained an armchair interest in astronomy,
amongst lots of other things. I now live in central London 
which makes visual observations of anything except Venus, half
a dozen of the brighest stars and hypothetical close 
supernovas problematic to say the least ! Hale-Bopp was clearly
visible however, and a couple of friends and I had a break out
in the country purely to get a good view.

I'd taped a couple of TV documentaries last year about the 
Shoemaker-Levy impacts, Tunguska and so on, one of which included
a sequence of a computer simulation of a large impact in the 
Atlantic. This got me thinking about hunting NEOs, comets etc. 
as an interesting and possibly useful way to get involved in 
observing. Around then I got an unexpected payrise, and after 
buying a PC, made vague plans for getting into amateur observing.
this might involve the PC and/or video (I'm allegedly a computer
programmer, but I need all the practice I can get ;) ) but isn't
likely to be practical for a few years yet. In the spirit of
'RTFM' I bought 'The Observer's Guide to Meteors' & added it to
the large pile of stuff to catch up on "one day". The next morning
there was a short piece about the November Leonids on the radio - 
I grabbed the book, looked them up and thought, hmmm, possible
large storm ... interesting ... 

The friends I towed down to the country to see Hale-Bopp seem
to be trusting me on this one, especially since I did some 
searching on the web and showed them an eyewitness account of the
1966 storm. We're now planning to get out of London in Nov., too. 
(Has anyone any suggestions for good observing sites ? the Canary
Islands ? I know that the ideal location would be further east, 
possibly in China - but I don't think I can afford that :(  .)

Having done the basic research I realise I need as much practice 
as possible; I should also get to know my way around the sky a 
little better ! This list has already improved my knowledge of 
the subject & I'm enjoying it. (Re: contributions from professionals -
I'm all in favour, personally.)

To close with something back on topic - re: the possibility of
a significant or catastrophic impact in the future :

1. As far as we know, no impact at any time in the past 4 billion
years of life on earth has killed off *everything*. 

2. Large impacts obviously have happened, and the possibility 
of our species being significantly affected by one at some point
does exist.

3. The odds of an impact large enough to cause damage and frighten
people a little are significantly greater than the odds of one big
enough to wipe us *or* our civilisation out.

4. As far as I know, *no* impact significant enough to make it
into recorded history has happened in the 6000-odd years of 
human society.

5. Even asssuming a (IMHO unlikely) probability of a significant 
impact once every ten thousand years, and that the last one happened
just before we started writing things down, the odds of the next
one happening during my lifetime seems low enough that it doesn't 
keep me awake at night.

6. Having said that, I think it does make sense to have a structured
program for finding and tracking such objects; but I'm not 
qualified to quantify the amount of resources that should reasonably
be used for this. Just enough that there's room left
for me to make a small contribution, I suppose :)

Finally - this list has one of the best signal:noise ratios I've
found on the web;  large thanks to Lou and the others involved 
in establishing this forum.

Clear skies to one and all,

Andrew

-- 
   Andrew Simmons // culture, web, techno, stars //
From the perlfaq (http://language.perl.com/faq/index.html) :
   | When shouldn't I program in Perl? 
   | When your manager forbids it -- but do consider replacing them :-).  
andrew@zpokdot demon.codot uk==simmons@logica.com==simmona2@bp.com

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