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Re: (meteorobs) The END of Visual Observing ?!?!?



On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Joseph Assmus wrote:

> >this is  doubtless the beginning of the end for visual meteor >observing :(

>   No No! Don't say that!

I won't.  The visual observations are more readily (at this stage)
standardised into ZHR; a system that has the major advantage of a long
observational history.  Visual observers also tend to look at brighter
meteors (depending on the specific camera setup), and thus a different
population.  Mixing video and visual in the same analysis is very
problematic at the moment.  Each techniques has different systematic biases.

At a guess, I'd say visual observations for ZHR calculations will remain
important and that magnitude distributions and plotting _may_ become
downgraded.  However, no change in techniques looks close on the horizon
and the IMO bods and others will have a lot of work on their hands to try
to define new video standards.  Meteor video software is the first great
leap, but statistical standardisation for varying conditions, gain,
field-of-view, elevation of camera, angular velocity etc etc will not be
trivial.  So keep observing!!!

Cheers, Rob

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