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(meteorobs) re: Leonid models discussion
Hi folks,
Concerning the discussions about the "victory" or "failure" of
several Leonid models:
In my opinion both the Asher & McNaught as well as the
Lyytinen & Van Flandern models did a pretty remarkable job.
Enough to impress me. While a bit off-schedule, in fairness I
have to say that the peaks did occur close to what they
predicted. A deviation of 0.5 hours is nothing compared to the
general inabbility to predict anything before these models
came into existence. I don't think a deviation of 0.5 hours is
a failure of the Asher & McNaught model as I have seen it
mentioned somewhere. It does warn not to put too much
overconfidence in the predicted times in the sense of taken
the accuracy too optimistic as seems to have been done, and
that is an important conclusion. But translating this into
"failure" is a bridge too far.
I think the reasonable fit to about 0.5 hours promotes
confidence in the peaks predicted for the upcoming years, as
well as perhaps putting some of us down on our feet again with
regard to too strictly taken accuracies for these predictions.
Clearly, it are still observational data which put constraints
on the interpretation and acceptability of model results, and
not vice versa (last months I sometimes did "smell" the latter
approach with some...). But generally, I should say predicting
to within 0.5 hours is a remarkable job!
As far as rates are concerned, Lyytinen seems to do remarkably
well, and better than Asher & McNaught (who as Rob noted
focussed more on predicting peak locations). Thus I am
confident that peaks will occur next year over the US and Asia
close (to within 0.5-0.75 hours) of the predicted locations,
but not too confident that these will provide the predicted
exceptional rates in the order of 25 000. Lyytinen predicts
ZHR's of 2000 respectively 6000 for the US and Asian peaks in
2001, and perhaps that should be the figures to go for with
regard to expectations, while maintaining caution. Therefore:
go out and see next year!!
- Marco Langbroek (DMS)
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Marco Langbroek
Faculty of Archaeology tel. +31 71 5272926/25
Leiden University fax +31 71 5272928
P.O. Box 9515 m.langbroek@arch.leidenunivdot nl
NL-2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands http://homes.dsldot nl/~marcolan
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