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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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