Notes concerning filling in the forms

• Date, Time: Use UT (UTC/GMT) only; please pay attention to the date - remember it changes at midnight.
• Location of observation, geographic coordinates: Name of the location in the original language, adding state, country, district or similar information later. Be as precise as possible with geographic coordinates. FIDAC in unable to determine the coordinates of all the little villages on Earth!
• Path, coordinates of first/last sighting: Note right ascension (in degrees) and declination of first and last point; specify the accuracy of the measurements and the equinox.
• Magnitude: Give the apparent magnitude if possible, or if not known exactly, a magnitude interval (e.g.-5 mag to -8 mag).
• Duration: Give the estimated or measured duration of the luminous flight in seconds.
• Color: Give the color (of the 'nucleus') seen and any variations, referring only to pure colors, not, for example, "bluish" or "bluish-green" (use "blue" or "blue and green" instead).
• Trail: Note appearance and, if known, color and shape.
• Fragmentation: Give the number of fragments, their brightness, color and position on the trajectory. Note also any sparks in this section.
• Persistent train: Note the duration, color, shape and any variations.
• Angular velocity: Note this in degrees per second, or using the appropriate scale number: 0 = stationary, 1 = very slow, 2 = slow, 3 = medium, 4 = fast, 5 = very fast.
• Sounds: Describe the sounds (compare with supersonic sounds, like an avalanche, swishing, whistling,etc) and the time between the optical and audible observations.
• Observer: Name and, if possible, address.
• Source, reviewer: This should be given if observations of other people are reported or the information about the fireball is from local astronomical or other journals. Note the address of the reviewer to allow queries.

Please, note only those data you observed with certainty. For later analysis it is better to have less but certain data, rather than a huge amount of questionable information! In the case that several observers witnessed the same fireball, they may summarize the data in one form, but should mention the scatter in the data. If a certain position of the list has not been recognized, put a dash in the respective position in order to distinguish it from the entry 'zero' or 'none'. As an example, the entry '-' for sound means that no information can be given (perhaps other sources of noise nearby), while 'none' indicates that the observer explicitely paid attention to this, but did not hear any meteor sound.

If you not only have a visual fireball observation, but also a photograph of it, please do not forget to send the photographic data to the IMO Photographic Meteor Data Base too.