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Re: (meteorobs) Re: Leo 2001 coverage in S&T 3/2002

In a message dated 2/6/02 11:26:59 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
dfischer@astro.uni-bonndot de writes:

<< By the way, if you really want to get angry at S&T, look into their 1966 
coverage
 of the big Leonid storm: The first article was already near-perfect. I see no
 reason to let the standard slip significantly one orbit of Tempel-Tuttle 
later ... >>

    It is funny that you mention this, since (in my opinion) the article that 
appeared in the March 2002 S&T actually compared quite favorably with the 
summary of the 1966 Leonids (which can be found in the January 1967 issue of 
S&T).  What is different is that in 1966, S&T requested readers to send their 
observations about the Leonids directly to them.  They gave some brief 
details in their November 1966 issue concerning the importance of making 
hourly counts and also included some comments from Brian Marsden and Charles 
Olivier.  After the shower, all the observations (chiefly from the US) 
received went into the magazine's analysis, which was done in-house by the 
late Joe Ashbrook and former S&T editor-in-chief, Leif Robinson.

    For the 2001 Leonid analysis however, S&T relied heavily on data received 
from the AMS, IMO and NASA . . . and it was stressed that this avalanche of 
worldwide data (covering at least three different meteor trails) was only in 
its preliminary stages.  Buttressing this, Sirko Molau wrote here only a few 
days ago that:  "After all we have not even finished the visual analysis in 
IMO (Rainer and co are working hard on that), and the numbers are still 
changing significantly." 

    I am sure that once all of the data has been scrutinized/analyzed that 
S&T will have them in print . . . probably as the lead-in to what is 
anticipated in 2002 (which in itself is likely to change a few times between 
now and November)!

-- joe rao
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