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Re: (meteorobs) Pointer Meteor Definition
>not to have any angular motion). I was wondering what folks on the list
>thought would be a reasonable upper limit to the angular extent of motion.
>I was thinking maybe 3 arc-minutes (one-tenth the diameter of the moon)?
>Should it be less?
Pete, you don't mention whether you are simulating HUMAN perception, or if
you're trying to model something else. If you're interested in the limits
of motion detection for naked-eye meteor observers, of course it's going
to be very observer-dependent... Norman McLeod may perceive meteors with
angular extents as little as 2 arcmins as non-points, while someone like
me might call any meteor smaller than 30 arcmins a point. Naturally, too,
it'll depend on both angular velocity (as Rob McNaught mentioned), and on
DCV (instantaneous Distance of meteor from observer's Center of Vision).
I guess if you ran such a model against a RANGE of assumptions for these
values (e.g., 1-deg bins for radiant distance, 10 km/s bins for geocentric
velocity, 10-deg bins for DCV, 5-arcmin bins for naked-eye resolution),
you'd have a very interesting set of data for future perception studies!
Lew
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