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(meteorobs) Re: technique

Chris,

WOW! This was really an eye opener. Now I know why the IMO visual
handbook recommends no music or conversation during observing sessions.

We must remember though that observing should be enjoyable and not a
chore. If we must "work" to observe then it becomes a chore. If it adds
to the pleasure and relaxation of observing by having music in the
background then I see no harm. I'm certainly guilty of this but my music
is very low for the same reasons Chris gave!

I am going to give Chris's method a try to see what happens. Hopefully I
won't get a headache as I too am not into meditation. Still it looks
interesting especially if it provides higher rates during those dreadful
spring months!

Chris, thanks for taking the time to share this useful information with
us.

Clear Skies!

Bob Lunsford

 

Chris Crawford wrote:
> 
>      I have experimented with the "Zen" mode on occaision - that
>      is to fix the eye in one spot near a chosen star and not
>      move at all. This does some peculiar things to the retina
>      and perceptionwhich I am sure some of you can put a
>      technical description to.
> 
> I've done a lot of personal experimentation in this direction, and
> there's a lot of applicable material from the psychology of
> perception. The centrally important concept is attention. Basically,
> you want to concentrate as much attention as possible on the meteors.
> There are four ways of increasing attention:
> 
> 1. Increase base-level attention: don't fall asleep. Take caffeine.
> 
> 2. Eliminate external distractions. This is really important! Few
> observers realize just how debilitating distractions can be.
> Conversation is the worst offender here, because you lose attention to
> the listening process as well as to the parsing process. If you were
> to graph the CoP on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis, I am certain
> that it would plummet for the duration of the utterance plus a few
> hundred milliseconds afterwards. During conversation, you are as good
> as blind. Therefore, when I observe, I prefer to be alone, or at least
> with gagged colleagues. It's also a good idea to wear earplugs,
> although where I live, the nocturnal activities of the mountain lions
> make this an act beyond my courage. But in any case, you want to
> eliminate all sounds.
> 
> 3. Eliminate internal distractions. This is also important. When
> you're thinking about your job, your love-life, or what you're going
> to have for breakfast, you are diverting attention from the visual
> field to the internal processing. This requires great mental
> discipline, but if you can keep from thinking, empty your mind, and
> shut down everything but eyeballs and visual cortex, you'll see more
> meteors.
> 
> 4. Concentrate attention on the non-foveal field of view. This is also
> difficult, as we are inclined to increase foveal attention when we are
> alert. Imagine the following scenario: you are asleep in bed when you
> hear a strange noise somewhere in the house. Frightened, you get up to
> investigate, but you leave the lights off. As you prowl through the
> house, your attention is maximized -- but you manifest it by darting
> your eyes about frenetically. Given the dark surroundings, you really
> would be better off using peripheral vision, but you  cannot prevent
> yourself from concentrating your attention on the high-resolution,
> low-sensitivity foveal image.  The same basic problem arises with the
> meteors. Most people try to watch the meteors by darting their fovea
> all over the field of view. This is actually counterproductive, as the
> peripheral photoreceptors have a slower response time than the foveal
> ones. In other words, whenever you dart the fovea to a different point
> in the visual field, the central 2 degrees covered by the fovea come
> into view first, and the surrounding field registers a little while
> later. Thus, every time you change foveal direction, you lose
> peripheral vision for some milliseconds. Do this ten times a second
> and you are losing a lot of useful information. The solution is NOT to
> fix the fovea on a single point; as Bob pointed out, the Troxler
> effect will subvert any such strategy.
> 
> So what's a poor observer to do? My strategy involves several
> components. First, stop looking at constellations and see only a
> random collection of stars. As soon as you impose the mental construct
> of a constellation on your visual field, your visual cortex spends
> time organizing the field of view to meet the construct, and your
> fovea darts around under auto-pilot, checking out every star to make
> sure it fits the pattern. Clear your mind of constellations! Second,
> and most difficult of all, is a Zen-like approach to the field of
> view. Remember, you are looking at a bunch of pinpoints of light in a
> black field of view; your visual cortex will insist on examining the
> pinpoints, when you want to watch the field, not the points. I
> sometimes try to get into the right frame of mind by muttering to
> myself, "I am one with all the stars." This is best voiced in an
> exotic foreign accent ;-)  OK, OK, I know it sounds silly, and I am
> more comfortable with statistics than meditation, but it really works.
> During the 1999 Leonids, I was invited by Dr. Peter Jenniskens to
> participate in his airborne campaign, along with six others who are
> top-notch meteor observers. Since I was programming the computer that
> recorded all the observations, I included some measurements of
> relative performance among the observers. I kept this information
> secret, as I did not want it to influence the behavior of the
> observers. After the mission, I went through and analyzed the
> performance figures. Although I am twenty years older than the average
> observer in that group, I easily outperformed all of them, and in
> several cases by an embarrassing margin. My techniques are quite
> difficult to implement, and I must practice to get into top form, but
> they really work!
> 
> Chris
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