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(meteorobs) Re: REPORTING on the Leonids
Tom L. of the ATMs of Boston asks:
>I was wondering where we were going to send our meteor totals?
>The last time I observed I sent them to sky and tel and to a
>meteor society. Most requirements I can meet, except trying
>to estimate meteor mags.
Tom, thanks for asking your questions! I completely forgot
to tell folks what to DO with all the data they collect. :)
First off, estimating meteor magnitudes *during a storm* is a
very tough thing to do! So if you are simply doing one-minute
(or 5- or 10-minute) meteor counts, that is absolutely fine...
Meteor magnitudes would then be gravy on top of the turkey. :)
Second, if you find the IMO Star Count Areas too intimidating,
please don't give up! ANY sort of star count might prove use-
ful later: even if you just count the stars you see inside of
the Little Dipper's bowl, for example, or in the Great Square
of Pegasus, it COULD be used later on to decipher your "LM".
Worst case, memorize ONE mag. 5.0 star, ONE mag 5.5 star, ONE
6.0 star and ONE mag. 6.5 star, and just jot down which ones
of these four you can see during the night you observe...
Finally, once you have collected all your data (including the
lat/long/elevation of the location you observed at), I would
recommend just typing all your data into an email, something
like the following format, and sending it to:
namn@atmob.org
"NAMN" stands for the North American Meteor Network: for any
meteor watchers on this Continent who want to try their hand
at recording, N.A.M.N. is a free, all-volunteer organization
dedicated to helping you. See our Web site for more info:
http://www.namnmeteors.org
(You can email results to S&T if you'd like also - but they
will probably be more interested in juicy "descriptions" of
what you saw, as opposed to your actual data... They aren't
a repository for international or regional meteor data.)
Here is that suggested format I mentioned, based on a report
about 2002's Perseids, from well-known author Alan MacRobert:
==============================================================
To: namn@atmob.org
Subject: Leonid report, night of Nov 18/19
==============================================================
Observer: Alan M. MacRobert
Place: Bedford, MA (Lat 42.5 N, long 71.3 W)
Time: 4:46-10:46, 19 Nov 2002 UT. [UNIVERSAL TIME = EST+5]
Effective time: 100% (no time lost to looking away or breaks)
Limiting mag.: 5.0 [measured by counting stars!]
Sky obstructions: none.
Direction faced: Looked straight up.
Totals: 3,340 Leonids, 16 others.
--
ONE MINUTE COUNTS STARTING 09:45 UT
09:45 23 LEO
09:46 17 LEO
09:47 19 LEO
09:48 ...
.
.
.
==============================================================
PLEASE NOTE: For observers who are more experienced with
meteor observing, the following sites provide some useful
formats to follow when you are writing your report email:
http://www.namnmeteors.org/namn_form.html
http://www.namnmeteors.org/imo_form.html
http://www.imodot net/visual/major02.html
Tom, in response to the latter parts of your email:
>What stars of known magnitude, can we compare them with?
Try using these four charts of the sky: they are marked
with a nice selection of comparison stars around the sky:
http://www.namnmeteors.org/charts.html
>... Also can certain colors of the meteors help determine
>magnitude? For instance, last year I observed turquoise,
>red, and kind of a yellowish white mostly.
Colors are certainly fun to observe: and if you feel like
trying to NOTE your meteor colors, go for it! But I'm not
aware of any relationship between meteor colors and meteor
brightness. So consider this an "extra" - definitely less
important than the other things discussed above, including
individual meteor magnitudes.
Clear skies all!
Lew Gramer (GRALE)
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