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(meteorobs) report DMS meeting 25 April
Hello!
Last saturday we had our half-yaer DMS meting, at Bussloo public
Observatory. Hereby a short impression.
The weather was bad: overcast skies, culminating in rain. The observatory
turned out to be difficult to reach: roads around the observaotory were
blocked because the locals were having a 'kloot-schiet marathon'.
"kloot-schieten" -litterally translatiing to "shooting your nuts" (!), is
a popular folk sport in the east of our country. I do not know exactly,
but it is something like: you have a small hard ball, and you have to
travel a several km long course by kicking or throwing that ball. The
winner is that person that accomplishes that with the least amount of
throws/kicks).
Some 20 people attended the meeting. Special guest
was german video-observer Sirko Molau. As usual, we had some equipment on
display, and a programm with some talks on different subjects, as well as
time for informal chats, demonstrations of software etc.
We started with a demonestartion of Robert Haas' new compact quick
employable camera setup. I already gave some description of it in my mail
with Lyrid results. It took ( I timed it!) 1 minute 20 seconds to get the
setup operational, from closed flight-case to full employment of 15
camera's and rotating shutter. Of course, the camera's are pre-programmed
and operate fully automatically controlled by two command backs. Using
the two alternatingly, you can switch from say 10-minute exposures to 30
second exposures within a fw seconds just by pressing two buttons.
I opened the lecture- session with a demo of my LYRID audio-tapes,
featuring my 'Hick-ups' of that night (see my Lyrid report).
Then I started the talks with a short talk on the Draconids and prospects
for that stream for this year. Of course, we decided to mount a campaign
around this stream on October 8/9.
Hans Betlem demonstrated his new electronic archive of 'Radiant', our DMS
journal. Next year, DMS will have its 20 year anniversary, and Hans wants
to have all volumes of Radiant available in electronic form (on CD-ROM)
by that time, as well as some major publications that have appeared over
the years.
After a break for lunch and soup, Marc de Lignie presented some of his
results on the Geminid orbital dispersion using his video-0rbits and the
DMS photographic orbits. A tchnical talk, but very interresting.
Then Marc, Casper ter Kuile and Carl Johannink presented the current
status of the LEONID expedition 1998 to central China. Bottleneck at this
moments are not the contacts with the Chinese, but our own Royal Academy
of Sciences (KNAW). They have givene our proposal to an external 'expert'
for
referee, but that external expert seems to be very lazy. he should have
given an advise mid-march. buts hasn't still done that: in fact, it turns
out he even hasn't read the proposal yet (it was submitted late january)! Of
course, that is ridiculous
and not something you expect from an organization like the KNAW.... The
problem is, that if we don't get a clear 'yes' soon' it will be too late
to be able to organize the expedition...... We are now putting pressure
on the KNAW to speed up the process, and our KNAW-contact is putting
pressure on the external referee.
After this long talk (where we also discussed alternatives in case the
China-option turns impossible), Sirko Molau gave a talk about the german
plans. The germans want to go to Mongolia, and he discussed the situation
and their (observational) plans there.
Following this, Sirko demonstrated his demo-software simulating a meteor
storm on the screen. They used it to test how many meteors per second are
still well estimated. According to their very interresting results, the
1966 data might actually have been underestimated rather then
oversetimated! But the discussion made clear that there still are some
pittfalls attached to the whole issue. Anyway, his dem0-programm is
marvelous: just like tru meteors shooting across the sky! Even sporadics
and satellites appear from time to time...!
We ended the meeting with the traditional diner in a Chinese restaurant,
with time for chats and a lot of joks, fun and laughter, as well as nice
food.
Well, so far my report. it was a very good, lively, productive and
pleasant meeting.
-Cheers!
-Marco Langbroek
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