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Re: (meteorobs) Very Fast Sporadics




Of course you can always make your own judgement calls, George - though when 
your plots are recorded by IMO, there's really no judgement call is there? 
Either they match objective criteria for a shower or they don't?

Think about it: if we relied on your interpretation of your plots to say those 
meteors were *not* DAUs, wouldn't we have to agree with George Gliba (or anyone 
else for that matter) if they interpreted their plots to mean there *were* DAUs 
on a given night, or Aries Triangulids, or Upsilon Pegasids, or Andromedids, or 
anything else for that matter??? Can't have it both ways...


Anyway, based on your assertion that ALL FIVE meteors appeared to radiate from 
"The Kids" (again 10o degrees from the DAU radiant), and that the DAU radiant 
is probably relatively ill-defined even assuming it IS a single radiant, and 
that even a well-defined radiant can (according to the IMO method) have meteors 
TWENTY OR MORE degrees in error assigned to it if they're sufficiently far from 
the radiant (of course you are familiar with that part of IMO's reduction 
method)... Again, if we assume all this, it seems to point mighty heavily to an 
objective assignment of these meteors as DAUs. Judgement calls, committee 
votes, or personal views aren't at issue, are they?

Of course, I haven't seen your plots! It could be two of those meteors were too 
long to be DAUs, but weren't too long to match an apparent Kids radiant 10 
degrees away... (BTW, isn't putting "radiant" in quotes spurious? You can argue 
that every meteor actually DOES have a radiant, whether it's a shower meteor or 
not! Find the point of tangency of a meteor's orbit with our globe, and project 
that norm into space: there's your radiant.)

Clear skies,
Lew



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