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Re: (meteorobs) Automated video detection of meteors
Hi,
In answer to below 'discussion' between Robert and George:
For both Koen and me, most important is the joy of observing. Second
comes the wish to obtain some nice results that have some practical use.
In no way video-recording will interfere with that. It will not take away
the joy of observing, certainly not. Thus, it will not take away our
basic motivation for being involved with meteors.
It will not take away our capabilities to obtain
nice results of practical use either. I think video can be adding to
activity profiles in future (currently, our experience is that
transferring video data into a meaningfull activity profile is far from
straightforward yet!), but they will not take over (human observers have the
advantage that they are less expensive, run on hotdogs instead of
electricity, and don't need new tapes several times a night, and you
can't forget to turn their focus properly at infinite... And they have
motivation, simply because they like what they see.). Visual data are
usefull and will remain usefull, simply because, if the observers have
experience and the analyst knows what he is doing, there is not much
wrong with activity profiles from visual observers (under the given
conditions, video curves are not better than visual curves). Perhaps
that last item is what has been obscured by the recent 'appraisal' of the
'wonderfull' video camera performance.
George; video was one but not the principal means that got us the grant from
the Dutch Academy of Science to go to China last year. Our grant proposal
was multi-disciplinary: visual observations, multistation video and
photography, radio-MS...: it was this 'totall package' that did it. If
anything earned us that grant, then it
was the two decades we spend as an active association in developing new
techniques, opening new research areas (also visually!) and establishing a
productive structure for our activities, and last but not least:
reporting on them. The people in the KNAW China
committee who decided on the grant proposal knew very little about
astronomy, let alone what video is capable of and what not. But they were
able to recognize the structures that belong to a good productive
research proposal, and with some external advise could see that the
results would be profitable in a scientific sense.
Actually, and this is not realised by some even in our own society
(unfortunately), the most productive way and most scientifically
productive way of observing meteors, is by a multi-disciplinary approach
which does not focus on video, photography or whatever else, but actively
seeks to combine different disciplines within meteor science. For
example, it is useless to just publish a set of orbits, however how
accurate: you have to couple them to activity structures etc. Our recent
papers on alfa Monocerotids and Quadrantids for example show this (the
results wouldn't have been half as significant without the activity
profiles gained from visual data!).
Thus, visual and video (or photography) should live in a symbiosis. I
object to views that present believed accomplishments (correct or not) of
one branch of activity (video) as making the other obsolete, or that see
one branch (video) as endangering another branch (visual): visual and video
are NOT competing.
- Marco Langbroek
> >In a message dated 99-07-21 16:27:21 EDT, Robert Haas wrote:
> > Hi Guy's
> > Ever heard of Koen Miskotte And Marco Langbroek
> > The one of the most active visual observers of Europe
> > There are members of Delphinus
> > And there observing site by site whit High tech Video camera systems
> > From 1993
> > NO Problem !!!!!
> >
> > Robert Haas
Reply George Zay:
> >
> >Perhaps it hasn't occurred to them yet that they might be spinning their
> >wheels visually? Or that their close proximity to High tech Video camera
> >systems might have been the means that got them the Dutch grant ticket to
> >China last year for the Leonids? As long as the goose is laying golden eggs
> I
> >wouldn't kill it either.
> >GeoZay
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>
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