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(meteorobs) The Bortle Dark Sky Scale and meteors?




A recent thread on a regional astronomy mailing list I belong to mentions
the excellent article by John Bortle in Sky & Telescope's Feb 2001 issue.

Many of our readers may have seen the article already. However, for those
who have not, it argues (rightly, I think) that the Limiting Magnitude and
other traditional measurements of sky darkness simply fail to accurately
reflect the visibility of deep-sky and other extended objects. In place of
these traditional measurements, Bortle presents a simple 9-step scale for
sky darkness, based on the observed visibility of various specific objects
and classes of objects, both in the sky and on the ground near an observer.

My question for 'meteorobs' is this: Although the Bortle scale clearly can
not and should not ever replace Limiting Magnitude as a calibrating factor
for visual meteor observations, should meteor recorders in fact begin to
record the Bortle Scale of the skies under which they observe meteors? The
argument in favor of this is simply that one can never forsee what value a
piece of data might hold for future research. And something which purports
to measure the "quality" of the sky, may some day be useful for those who
wish to allow the PUBLIC to know what to expect from meteor showers.

The argument against this, obviously, is that meteor observers are already
asked to collect a good number of different data items, both about their
observing conditions and about individual meteors. Adding one more without
definite good reason may not make sense.

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of our readers on this!

Clear skies,
Lew Gramer


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