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Re: (meteorobs) Leonid storm predictions



In a message dated 11/9/99 3:52:48 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
rmn@aaocbn.aaodot gov.au writes:

<< S&T for Nov
 1999 has a article by Joe Rao.  There are some errors regarding our
 work.  The statement
 
    "David Asher's analysis of meteoroid streams that are three revolutions
     old suggest that 1999 compares somewhat favourably to the
     one-revolution storm of 1833 and the two-revolution storm of 1966."
 
 This is completely wrong in our view and must be Joe's interpretation of
 the data. >>

Rob -- my comments are based on David's original article that appeared 
earlier this year in MNRAS.  In that article (which did not contain any 
predictions concerning hourly rates for any given year) he had indicated that 
for possible meteor storms that it was important for the value RE-RD (the 
heliocentric distances of the dust trail's descending node and of the Earth 
at the same longitude) to be quite small.  The one revolution value for 1833 
was given as -0.0003 and the two revolution value for 1966 is indicated as 
-0.0001.  Since the 1999 three revolution value is predicted to be 
-0.0007, my interpretation of this was that this was "somewhat favorable" for 
a meteor storm (ZHR >1000 per hour) to occur.  I don't think that there could 
have been any mis-interpretation on anyone's part that based upon this I was 
infering that the very high rates of 1833 and 1866 was going to be repeated 
in 1999 -- especially since (as you yourself point out) I follow this up in 
the next paragraph by directly quoting your predictions for hourly rates not 
only for this year, but for the next several years to come.

-- joe rao
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