[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: (meteorobs) Persistent meteor trains
Hi!
I believe that this is a very nice discussion and
would like to share my experience on the mentioned
topics.
I have yet to see a really astonishing persistent train
as the longest trains I've seen all only lasted a couple
of seconds. I remember a Perseid with a train that maybe
lasted half a minute, but that was before I started to take
notes on the meteors so I can't say when and if fact can't
confirm it at all.
This leads to a very interesting point Thom
Morgan mentioned: how to keep record of "your" meteors.
The best thing would probably be single meteor data
(including information about train, color and even comments
if possible), both in printed and digital format, but
especially with high rate showers this is not practicable.
In this cases I usually include a "train distribution"
similar to the magnitude distribution in my reports, that
shows how many meteors of which shower produced trains
that lasted for <1s, 1s, 2s and so on.
I think that - as this discussion shows - information on the
probability of persistent trains for each meteor shower can
be very nice for amateur observers like me, although
it might not be that interesting from the scientific
point of view. Comments on the "highlights" of your watch
can also be very useful and nice to read (thinks like this
discussion with all the stories about most wonderful meteors
make me go out and observe in cold, clear nights).
By the way, my nicest "split" meteor was a 0.0m orange
Kappa Cygnid (15/08/2002), breaking up into (at least)
three pieces, that glowed out in a row.
Greetings
Daniel Gruen
The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
To stop getting all email from the 'meteorobs' lists, use our Webform:
http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html
Follow-Ups: