[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

ARCHIVE RESEND Re: (meteorobs) How do you do it?; charset=us-ascii


Hi William and others,

Well, I just came back from the weekend Starfest astronomy convention, situated 
north-west of Toronto, ON, Can. It was great to finaly meet some of the east 
coast meteor crew on this list. Present was Cathy Hall, Kim Hay, Lew Gramer, 
Wayne Hally, and myself.

Wayne's talk on meteors (in front of a large group) was very successful and 
informative. I learned some theory I never really thought of! Unfortunately 
skies were cloudy and did not let us with any observing time. Still it was 
really quite neat to get together and discuss meteors. I'll look forward to 
next year's events and meetings.

>Alright, alright.   Please George, Pierre, Mark, and all youse other guys
>and gals who report all these sightings.  When do you sleep, how do you
>hold down a 9 to 5, or in my case a 3-11pm job while you are logging 6
>hour teffs for nights in a row?

When do I sleep?? Good question!! Well yes, I do have a full time 9 to 5 job. I 
DO need to concentrate to get my work done correctly while in front of the 
computer all day. By the way, I'm a graphic designer. It all seems to depend on 
the individual. Everyone is different. Some need 7-8 hours sleep to function 
the next day and some get away with less.

Doing 6 hours teff for nights in a row is certainly not easy. In my case, I 
will carefully plan my sleep patterns with the observing periods. If it's a 
dark, moonless observing window, I'll go out as much as possible and still 
function ok the next day despite only 2-3 hours sleep those nights. This works 
for me as long as I'm well rested before the observing run.

After a few full nights observing and only a little amount of sleep, I usually 
crash during the weekend and sleep almost full days!! Actually, when I rode 
down about 8 hours to Starfest with Cathy late Thursday night, I was due for 
one of these long sleeps but could'nt really this time.

So this is how I recharge. I know not everyone can function like this. Many 
need a more stable sleep pattern every night. I figure once I start getting 
older, I probably wont be able to do this much teff around a full time 9 to 5, 
so I do whatever I can for now.

>I notice some of you, like Pierre, George, etc. have affiliations
>with observatories and astr0logical organizations.  Are these you're jobs?
>How do you do it?  What finally provoked my posting this was seeing GeoZ
>is settong tome apart to fish with his daughter which to me shows me that
>although his head is up in the stars his feet are also planted firmly on
>earth.

I'm part of a small informal group of observers. We call each other and go out 
to some site in the region of Ottawa, ON, Can. when the skies are good.

This is not job related. We voluntarily organize things. As for meteors, the 
data I send to the different organizations is also pure volunteer work.

To me, this is all worth it for very useful and important science. I love it, 
it's rewarding. I dont need to be payed to do it!

                                .    .    . .
Pierre Martin                  . . *  . *  .  .
***************************** . . . \   | .  .
Ottawa Valley Observers Group  .  .    .  .   . .
Visual meteor observer          .    . . .  -* .
Ottawa, Ontario, CAN              . .   . .  .
home:  p.martin@cyberusdot ca           /  . .  . .
*****************************       *  .   .  .
Graphic Designer                     .  |    .
National Aviation Museum                |   \
work:  pmartin@nmstcdot ca                 *  . \
*****************************                 \
                                               *
Follow-Ups: