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(meteorobs) New Meteor Software

Dear list members,

I might have (a part of) the answer to all future questions about which night will be the best to observe a certain stream :)

At least two years ago I started programming a tool that for a given place and time would say: you might be able to see X meteors of stream Y.

Ofcourse the first step is to estimate the current ZHR of a stream. "Meteor Activity I: The Annual Streams" by Peter Jenniskens provides a method and the data to do this. Then, by inversing the formula to calculate a ZHR from actual observations I can estimate a visible rate. While magnitude distribution is available and radiant altitude can be computed one nasty variable remains: the limiting magnitude.

Some years ago Bradley E. Schaefer published a Basic program in Sky & Telescope which could calculate an estimate for the limiting magnitude. Using this program and some modifications I found on the internet, I made a translation to C++ and the results are not that bad. I think they are good enough for the purpose at the moment, but improvements will be possible.

The (windows) program is freeware and can be downloaded from:

 http://meteoracle.supercelldot nl

There is a database with locations to select from, but apart from The Netherlands there are not that many locations in it yet. Though, if you have SkyMap Pro by Chris Marriot you should press the help button in the location window and read carefully :)

I still have many improvements and additions in mind. One of them is adding a dataset for the IMO streams. The problem is that the B parameter is not given for these streams, but maybe I can use the begin and end dates to estimate this value.

Daniel

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