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Re: (meteorobs) leonids storm



> Khaled M. Tell wrote today: 
> 
> > I have recently viewed the imo leonid meteor storm simulation(
> > metsim)and I was very much impressed with the program which was
> > carefully made and accurately simulating a meteor storm.
> 
> Yes, Sirkos program is indeed very nice. 

Yes, must agree.  I had to borrow a colleague's PC to try it out briefly.
Any chance of a Unix version Sirko, please?

> I completely agree that one cannot COUNT more than 5-6 meteors per second.
> Nevertheless one can roughly ESTIMATE such rates. Turn on metsim, simulate
> 10 meteors per second and the 50 meteors per second. There is a hige
> difference. 

In my only and quick test with minimal training, I ran about eight
simulations and had an rms error of <6%.  That might have been a
fluke, but I had the impression that one could make a reasonable
estimate even at >40 m/s.  How much of that was due to training (you
are presented with some examples so you have a scale by which to judge
the test runs, which you won't have under the heavens) coupled with
restricted field of view is hard to say.  There's also the cold,
excitement,  distraction from whooping colleagues and brilliant fireballs
missing from computing meteor observing.

Doing telescopic-meteor simulated observing with the apparent field of
view being 36-40 degree rather than my normal 52 degrees certainly
generated higher precision positions than are indicated by my real
observations.

> > moreover, I tried to test the method suggested by the imo, that is to
> > change to ten meteors count and replace them by one beep instead of
> > counting, but it appeared to me that this method is not practical to me
> > with the presence of high numbers of meteors.

We're guessing what's sensible.  I've revised my view since the first
International Leonid Watch article in WGN more than once, and I'm
still unsure.  One can argue that now that there are video cameras
operating, there's little point in trying to do science visually while
rates are more than a few per second.  You might as well lie back and
enjoy the astronomical spectacle of a lifetime.  It's going to be
harder for me as I do want to obtain counts of the faint meteors too,
but obviously if it's raining meteors over my head, I'm going to take
in the view.

We may have two bites of the cherry, so in 1999 we can learn from the
1998 experience.  At the highest rates I think you can only estimate
the number of meteors.  For some this estimate might be better than
trying to beep every ten.  It's like some people measure angular speed
in degree/sec and others use a scale.  At this point I think you have
go with what works for you.

Malcolm
tele@imodot net

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