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Re: meteors



Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

I heard on the radio that, on the average, one should
be able to see one meteor every two minutes, if there
are no clouds. No standard deviation was mentioned.

Arrival is more-or-less a Poisson process, so no
standard deviation need be specified; the process
is characterized by a single parameter.

But .... there's something like a Zipf's law for brightness:
a few really bright ones, and lots of not-so-bright ones.
In Montclair NJ you'll be lucky to see more than a few
per hour -- too much light pollution. Go 50 miles to the
northwest and you might see 60 per hour. That means there
will be some minutes with none and some minutes with two or
more.