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Re: (meteorobs) Leonids: max ZHR in 1966
Hello Robert,
When I wrote 'bizarre' I did not mean to diminish the efforts of Milon et
al., but just wanted to point out that the method is certainly not a
method as 'usually' applied to meteors. Especially the sweeping head
motion that seems to be described is quite unusual as opposed to a
quietly wandering gaze in a fixed area. That already should be a reason
for some caution. Things easily go wrong when using unfamiliar methods.
Of course I realize Milon et al. had to do what they could, and perhaps
quite unprepared. In that sense, no bad words at all, I am certain that
they did to the best of their efforts.
We have been wondering (and worrying!) about what to do under these kind
of conditions ourselves: in about 3 weeks from now, our expedition members
perhaps have to deal with the same situation Milon et al. were facing.
I have no 'completed' thought on photographic data. Just that we noted in
practice that these kind of procedures are problematic (and not only
photography. Visual Leonid observations in 1995 suggest ZHR's around
35-40; but our video results give ZHR ~5! Something is wrong, albeit we
do not exactly know what). That makes me hesitant towards any figure
resulting from it, be it more or less than 150,000. Too many things that
have little to do with exact parameters like focal lenght, film
sensitivity, Lm etc. have an influence I think.
-Marco
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