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Re: (meteorobs) Re: Automated video detection of meteors

George,

>  Well folks, if _you_ promise to observe next February 10 hours each
>  night at -10 deg centigrade, full moon, and minimum sporadic activity,
>  I'll switch off my system. :-)<<
> 
> In other words, since you have this period well covered and a lot more 
> accurately, I probably shouldn't bother if the mood for visual recording was 
> there?

when it's nighttime for you, it's daytime for me...

> Probably initially they would be looked upon as useful additions, but as more 
> and more automated visual systems come into play, there would be less and 
> less motivations for the visual observer to make the effort to plot and do 
> other manual recording. ...

What do you expect me to do? Shall I stop using a video system only not to
discourage visual meteor observers? Would you forbid to use photocameras
not to discourage visual observers of deep-sky objects? Would you stop
builing spacecrafts like Galileo only not to discourage visual planetary
observers?

That's certainly not the way scientific progress is made. And that's what
we are looking for: New insight into meteor showers, their
properties and evolution. Or am I wrong?

The plain fact is that people do _not_ watch in cold February nights with
full moon, simply because it's no fun.

Sirko

PS: I can ensure you that we are still many years away from a global
coverage of meteor activity by video systems. You would need several dozen
expensive video systems spread all over the world, the appropriate
computer hardware and people willing to operate such a station. My camera
is operated in every clear night. In the last few months I got on average
around 30 hours of observations - that's only 4% of the whole month.
In these four percent I monitored a field of view of 40 deg, which is
again only 5% of the visible sky...

--
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*  Dipl.-Inform. Sirko Molau                  *                          *
*  RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl fuer Informatik VI  *              __          *
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