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Re: (meteorobs) 1st Attempts at logging data, QUESTIONS
Hi John,
Glad to hear you were able to get some observing in! Concerning your
questions, most are answered in detail in the NAMN Guide to Meteor Observing
I sent you via email. Take a look at the chapter on visual observing. But to
address your questions briefly:
>Should you just count the obvious stars? What about the ones you can see
faintly in your >peripheral vision?
I count the obvious stars of course, but also the faint ones I see if they
are within the count area and I am convinced they are actually stars.
>...Aquarius, and capricorn but not the actual RA/Decl points, If I traced
the
>path back to one of these constellations can I call it a member of one of
>these showers? Or should I call everything but the persieds SPO's?
You should use three criteria for shower association. Path direction is one,
velocity and length are the others. This is the more difficult part of
meteor observing, and your ability at it will improve with experience. A
viable alternative is to do what you mention - list everything as sporadics
if they aren't classified as Perseids. What this tells me when I archive the
data is the you simply did not watch the other showers. In fact, when
someone first begins to observe, I recommend they start with only a shower,
maybe two to begin with. Once experience is gained, you can monitor the 6 or
more radiants you might see others talking about.
>I did not get magnitudes as I need to do some more research to find some
stars to >compare against, are my numbers seen still of much value?
Meteor magnitudes are an important thing to track. Take a look at the NAMN
Guide..dot it contains a listing of comparison stars. The data, without
magnitudes, is still valuable, so please send it to me for archiving.
>On 7/31-8/1 I began watching near
>Altair and ended up in the square of pegasus as the stars rose, 8/1-8/2 I
>started late and looked into Pegasus, were these good or bad choices? How
>much does that effect my data? Any comments and or suggestions are welcome.
In general, it is best to center your field of view about 20 to 40 degrees
or so from the radiant in question. Also note that you should identify these
fields of view, and report them on your report. Include any that you may
have changed during the session.
The above is a very brief answer to your questions. If any of the above is
not clear, feel free to contact me at my address below.
Mark Davis, MeteorObs@charlestondot net
Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, USA
Coordinator, North American Meteor Network
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NAMN home page:
http://medicine.wustldot edu/~kronkg/namn.html
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