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Re: (meteorobs) Video/Minor Shower Radiants
Hi George,
I was just to post our July results, but I'm still waiting for data of one
of our observers. So I'll post the stuff tomorrow. Anyway, July was pretty
successful for us, we recorded plenty of meteors from the Aquarid complex,
Capricornids, and many early Perseids.
> I was wondering how long it might take for those with Video set ups such as
> Sirko, Gural, and Marco's to define all the listed minor shower's radiant
> diameter and position? It seems that one night's usage of a video on the
> maximum night of each minor shower would pretty much resolve them a lot
> better than any visual methods? Instead of many years of plotting, can a
> video nail it down in one night?
Well, one night is probably too optimistic. Just as a visual observer also
a video system records only a few minor shower meteors each night. If the
meteors would be bright and long-lasting and the radiant well-defined,
then you may need only five shower meteors or so to pin down the position
of the radiant.
However, life isn't that easy. First of all it's always overcasted when
you want to observe. Then many meteors are faint and only visible on two
video frames, so the observational error is still relatively large. Third
the errors are still bigger if you observe far away from the radiant. I'm
forced to look almost towards the zenith, for example, since near the
horizon the sky is too bright. Finally if you have a bigger radiation
area, you may need many shower meteors to get an idea about the size and
position of a radiant.
I have not yet processed the July data with RADIANT, but I think this will
give us a good insight how accurate we can map minor showers like the
Aquarid complex. Under ideal circumstances you may be able to pin down a
minor shower within a few years, but given real life conditions it will
probably take a decade or so.
Sirko
--
**************************************************************************
* Dipl.-Inform. Sirko Molau * *
* RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl fuer Informatik VI * __ *
* Ahornstr. 55, D-52056 Aachen, Germany * " 2B v 2B " *
* * *
* phone: +49-241-8021615 * Shakespeare *
* fax : +49-241-8888219 * *
* email: molau@informatik.rwth-aachendot de * *
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* www : http://www.informatik.rwth-aachendot de/I6/Colleagues/molau *
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