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(meteorobs) Plotting Times/Dead Time




Recently Norman mentioned that he can plot meteors in 12 seconds. Thus he will
have 12 seconds of "Dead Time" per meteor to subtract from his observing time.
That is quite fast! Normally I deduct 30 seconds/ meteor when I plot. It's
been awhile since I last timed myself to see if my average needs adjusting. So
last night I used a stop watch to time myself for each of my 25 plots. This
dead time is when I'm actually looking down to record meteor data and not
looking up to note any other meteors. My plot time includes writing down the
meteor magnitude, speed number, train duration in seconds if any, hitting the
talking clock button and record the meteor appearance time, color, plot
accuracy number, shower abbreviation if recognized and of course the actual
plot of the meteor's trajectory onto one of 12 available maps. Usually the top
3 maps are the one's I will be doing the most plots on. This sometimes
involves a flipping of a page or two. Anyhow, my fastest plotting time was 21
seconds and my slowest was 36 seconds with all the others somewhere inbetween.
My average turned out to be 29.75 seconds. Looks like I won't need to adjust
my plotting time any? On occasions I will get stuck for some reason or another
and may take a little longer...but last night I didn't have that problem this
time. 

Norman, is 12 seconds your average time or is this your fastest time? Is this
12 seconds only for the plot on your maps or does it include writing down the
other info as well? Or do you talk the rest of the info into a tape recorder
while still looking up which would give you shorter times? It almost doesn't
seem physically possible to do all what I do (and assuming you do the same
thing) anywhere near 12 seconds....especially if it is an average? You
mentioned that you wear glasses while observing. No doubt that helps your
distant vision to look at the stars. But when you look down, do you have to
remove or adjust your glasses to see your charts up close? How do you do it?
George Zay