Just copying this round, as I thought it an interesting teaching example of
an experiment
JOHN B
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Rowland <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 10 August 2011 10:07
Subject: [yorkastronomy] Join the Great Moonlit Meteor Experiment
To: York Astro <[log in to unmask]>
**
Hi All,
You are invited to participate in a scientific experiment. You don’t need a
telescope; all you need is a friend with similar eyesight to yourself, who
is prepared to sit for 30 minutes or so with you, looking for meteors. And
in case you don’t know it, the Perseid meteor shower is due to peak this
weekend, on Friday night / Saturday morning. Trouble is, moonlight will be a
nuisance. Moonlight makes the background sky milky and prevents us seeing
the fainter meteors. However, *if you can somehow shield yourself from the
moonlight, even though you haven’t made the background sky any darker, will
you see more meteors than if you watch from a moonlit spot?*
**
The purpose of the experiment is to answer that question. Here is a way you
can not only watch meteors but contribute to the world’s scientific
knowledge base.
To participate, here’s what you need to do (this weekend, ideally):
1. Find someone with similar visual acuity to yourself who is prepared
to “buddy” you.
2. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday night, go outside with your
buddy at any time after about 11 pm, and ideally more like 1 a.m.
3. Find two places from which you have a similar view of any area of
sky up to the zenith ranging from ****north west**** through north to east.
Place ‘A’ must be somewhere from which, when you turn and look south, you
cannot see the Moon. Ideally, Place ‘A’ should be to the north of a
building, with a lot of the southern sky obscured by the building. Place ‘B’
should be out in the open, from which you can see *the same area of sky* as
from Place ‘A’ but when you look south, you can see the Moon and the
illuminated sky in its vicinity.
4. You sit in Place ‘A’; your buddy sits in Place ‘B’. You should both
be looking for meteors in the same area of sky (somewhere centred on but not
confined to north-east). You both sit there SIMULTANEOUSLY watching for
meteors and SILENTLY counting how many you see in a given period of time
(e.g. 15 minutes). You should write down the place letter and number of
meteors seen.
5. Without divulging to your buddy how many meteors you saw (and vice
versa of course) you then swap places with your buddy and look and count
again for the same length of time, and again, record the place letter and
number seen.
6. You may now each divulge the numbers you saw from each place. Now,
it doesn’t matter who saw what from where; the only thing that matters are
the numbers seen from each place. Add up the number seen from ‘A’ as one
total, and the number seen from ‘B’ as another total.
7. But now the important bit: report your findings to this group as
follows:
Subject: Moonlit Meteor Results from <your name>
Number seen from Place ‘A’ (in moonlight shadow) =
Number seen from Place ‘B’ (in full moonlight) =
Give your results first, but feel free to add comments and asides to bring
it to life and maybe give us a laugh.
*Please, DO NOT reply to each others results emails without changing the
subject to just “Moonlit Meteors” or it won’t be easy to distinguish the
original result emails from the chat, and chaos will ensue!*
Your results can then be added to the pool of results received and the grand
totals and thus the conclusion of the experiment determined.
Go on, give it a go. It could turn a possibly mundane watch into something
special, and it's fun!
Cheers,
John R2
****
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