I'm new to the group so if this has been discussed before, please don't flame me for this observation..
Recently, last few months its certainly been evident to me personally that I'm witnessing more and more sightings in my particular home town of Rockville, MD
Now, I got to wondering yesterday if others are witnessing it too which got me to thinking about having something along the lines of what SETI have (Slightly different I know) for the search for intelligent craft (SIC) ok well maybe we need a new synonym....
Probably like many others on here, you never have a camera handy when you need one, yes I know most camera phones today have decent CCD cameras and while these are pretty good for snapping the kids or pets at funny moments, there useless for sky gazing or even video recording due to compression and limited focus ability, most of my sightings seem to be very late in the evening or early morning, while out walking the dog (She has a Bladder complaint and needs out at least very 3 or 4 hours, poor thing) I guess I'm up and looking up to the heavens when most folks are in bed fast asleep, which got me wondering about the possibility of setting up a sky ward looking webcam, which one could review the next day/evening and delete/save as appropriate, I know that many folks use YouTube for posting this kind of stuff but it seems to becoming more and more like a place to dump CGI material...
I'm thinking we could set up a group on here for each city through out the US, then if this works make it global.
Working on the basis of what I have seen in just the last few months specifically over the DC area (Clear frosty night sky) it wouldn't take long to put together a network of reputable members submissions, that can validate from the video or stills if a particular object passed from say one city/state to another, this would also give great input as to the speed validation issue also... Has this ever been done before?
Web-cams are inexpensive and can be setup fairly cheaply at home, sure some maintenance would be required as it would need to fit inside a small box with glass to protect from the rain and snow, but the potential to capture multiple instances and reports would be interesting, now from what I know with most of what we are probably witnessing from a sighting perspective is of US Military origin and could probably be classed into this group. (but some may fall outside of this group)
As this is my first post here I thought I had best keep it short and sweet, would be interested to hear from others in the group that are willing to try this and mount a CCD outside and spare up some Hard Drive space for the use of capturing something worth while.
the duty doc.