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(meteorobs) Planetarium meteors

In August 1991, Montreal's (Quebec) Dow Planetarium had a month long 
or so show entitled "Attention Perseids!" As soon as I heard about 
this show, I just had to go and check it out! I figured it would be 
well worth travelling the 1.5 hour drive to Montreal. It turned out 
to be an interesting presentation, but rather brief as it lasted just 
around 15 minutes. The speaker gave an excellent presentation, 
including a good overview of comets, meteoroids, meteors and 
meteorites. Most of the show focused on the actual night sky and 
featured simulations of Perseids radiating from the correct area. The 
realism of the meteors was of "average" quality, and they were only 
projected close to Perseus. However, the coolest part came near the 
end when the speaker made a mention about the great storms of 
Leonids. Just when the stars of Leo happened to be right overhead on 
the huge screen, an awesome meteor storm was simulated. Although the 
projection was limited to showing nearly all similar looking meteors, 
the huge numbers all over the sky was really neat.

I'm not aware if that show has been repeated again on other occasions?

Also, several years ago I used to enjoy doing my own crude meteor 
simulations to train new observers. In preparation for a group meteor 
watch, I would invite people into a darkened room, complete with glow 
in the dark summer night sky (all constellations). There were even 
realistic sounds playing back in the background (insects, birds, 
etc.) I would then simulate meteors using various homemade projectors 
and even filters to provide a few colorful fireballs. I would ask the 
observer to record PER vs SPO, and fill in notes just like they would 
in the field. Naturally, more than half of all simulations were 
always missed, as the observer looked elsewhere, or missed several 
faint meteors. It did require a bit of practice and very fast 
reflexes for me to properly project meteors with acceptable 
alignments and paths. However, when our real organized Perseid watch 
went underway for the 1991 peak, the group was a lot better prepared.

Pierre


>I had hoped that some planetaria would do Leonid simulations, both for
>entertainment, but also to train/calibrate observers for an outburst.
>Whilst Sirko's software is excellent, it doesn't mimic the wide field
>of view lying under the celestial sphere.  Have readers heard of any such
>planetarium shows?

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