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Re: (meteorobs) Geminids from China (Dec. 14/15 ZHUJI)
From Jin Zhu's post last month regarding his team's excellent observing
campaign during the Geminids, I noted the following:
>For those which could be traced back geometrically to the GEM radiant,
>but be far from radiant with too short trail and too slow speed, I
>usually recorded them as SPOs...
Don't forget, folks - as strange as it may seem, there is NO minimum
length for a shower meteor. If you see a meteor which matches on both
path alignment and angular velocity, but seems too short, record it
as being from that Shower! To understand why, remember that meteors do
often change brightness along their path: the most extreme example of
this are meteors below naked-eye visibility, which might have a small
"terminal burst" bringing them up to mag 4 or so. Such meteors would
APPEAR as near-point meteors, despite the fact that they might in fact
have quite long trails when observed in the telescope or by radar.
Of course, an apparent point meteor would give you NEITHER a good path
alignment nor any velocity to go on, so it's clearly a bad example. :)
Clear skies,
Lew
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