(meteorobs) Observation August 14/15 2004

Mon Aug 16 00:48:53 EDT 2004

This past Saturday evening, I travelled up to La Verendrye site 
(located about 220km north-west of Ottawa) and witnessed the best skies 
I've seen in over two years!  It was really a spectacular and memorable 
night!!

When I left home, it was already getting late.  I was tired after 
having worked all day at the new house in preparation for a move.  Yet, 
the weather was looking promising and I didn't want to miss out a 
chance for a clear sky on a New Moon weekend.

By the time I arrived at La Verendrye's airstrip (2.5 hour later), it 
was already late evening, and getting quite dark.  The brightest stars 
were coming out.  I was greeted by what must have been at least 20 
other observers with various telescopes all setup along the runway.

As soon as I stepped out if the car, I was treated by a spectacular 
fireball... a mag -4 to -5 slow-moving fireball that came straight out 
of the north, crawled a long, slow path to the zenith, and ended with 
an intense blue terminal flash!  Wow!!!!!  What a way to start the 
night!!

I hurried to setup my cameras and observing gear before it got too 
dark.  Even well before astronomical night, the skies were magnificent! 
  All around us, the buzz and excitement of a clear, dark and 
transparent night was building and getting contagious.

The temperature did drop to just a few degrees above zero C.  It was a 
cool night and quite humid/dewy too.  There was a bit of ground fog 
too, limiting what we could see near the horizons.

However, high overhead the skies were absolutely spectacular and 
pristine...  This time we had no aurora at all, and it was truly dark 
at all directions.  What I enjoy of this site is the wide-open aspect 
of the sky that gives an impression of being completely surrounded.  
Constellations were buried in a sea of faint stars.  The summer Milky 
Way was so bright, it was almost annoying :) - a busy place with 
countless dust lanes and faint extensions.  The Milky Way around Cygnus 
and Cepheus was extending as much as 30 degrees thick!  What amazed me 
also was to see how far some of the sections of Milky Way extended, 
northward toward Polaris!  To the unaided eye, the M31 galaxy was 
dazzling sight and positively huge, while M33 was easy to pick up with 
direct vision.  Through 9x63 binoculars, both sections of the Veil 
nebula were easy to pick up.  Later at night, the zodiacal band and 
gegenshein were both visible as a very diffused glow running across the 
ecliptic, from Aquarius all the way to Taurus.  It kind of looked like 
a much fainter version of the Milky Way!  When Venus came up, it threw 
a huge glare all around it.  I did a direct star count (using star 
fields in Hercules and Ursa Minor) and for me the limiting magnitude 
reached 7.1.

For this meteor session, I faced the south and centered my field of 
view near Pegasus.  I had a very productive night!  In nearly 4 hours 
teff, I recorded as many as 117 meteors.  This count breaks down into 
39 Perseids, 8 North Delta Aquarids, 4 Kappa Cygnids, 2 North Iota 
Aquarids, 2 South Delta Aquarids, 1 South Iota Aquarid, 1 antihelion 
and 60 sporadics.

I seemed to notice many, many more of the faint meteors under such dark 
skies than usual.  Sporadics of mag +5 were quite abundant.  Perseids 
were steady all night, but strangely enough with no noticeable increase 
in rates as the radiant gained altitude.  The overall impression I had 
was that the meteor activity seemed almost as good early in the night 
as it did later on.

The highlights of the night...

- 12:03 EDT, a mag -3 Perseid fireball with 8 sec train.
- 1:05 EDT, a vivid YELLOW-GREEN mag +1 slow-moving Kappa Cygnid.
- 2:02 EDT, definitely the best one of the night!!! A 50 degree long 
earthgrazer of slow velocity came out of the north into the zenith, 
duration of 6-7 seconds (that seemed to make it last forever), yellow, 
flared to mag -3, then it *fragmented* into 2-3 pieces along with 
diffuse, almost nebulous-looking wake!!
- 3:39 EDT, a slow Kappa Cygnid near zenith swelled gradually to mag 
-3, intense yellow-orange color!

Despite being a bit tired, I was surprised to have been fully awake and 
alert all night until dawn.  I think such a high quality night probably 
gave me an extra boost of adrenaline.  The next day, I was a different 
sory.  I was totally tired.  I still have the two eyes in the same 
socket.  Yet, I have no regrets.  I'm very pleased at this night's 
results!

Meteor details copied below...

Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario

DATE: August 14/15 2004
BEGIN: 0355 UT (2355 EDT)  END: 0840 UT (0440 EDT)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -76 29' West; Lat: 46 59' North  Elevation: 1300 ft
City & Province: Réserve Faunique La Vérendrye, Quebec, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: talking clock/tape recorder, plotting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVED SHOWERS:_____________________________________radiant position
		KCG (Kappa Cygnids)____________________________19:00 +59
		NIA (North Iota Aquarids)______________________21:28 -07
		ANT (antihelions)______________________________22:28 -08
		NDA (North Delta Aquarids)_____________________22:36 -04
		SIA (South Iota Aquarids)______________________23:00 -13
		SDA (South Delta Aquarids)_____________________23:28 -12
		PER (Perseids)_________________________________03:20 +59
		NPX (sporadics from north apex)________________03:28 +34
		SPX (sporadics from south apex)________________03:28 +04
		SPO (random sporadics)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVING PERIODS: 0 = none seen;  / = shower not observed

PERIOD(UT)_FIELD____Teff__LM____PER_KCG_NIA_ANT_NDA_SIA_SDA_NPX_SPX_SPO

0355-0509__2055+13__1.00__7.03__11___1___1___0___2___1___0___0___0___12
0509-0635__2212+16__1.00__7.08__9____1___0___1___3___0___1___3___0___9
0635-0744__2329+12__1.00__7.10__11___2___1___0___2___0___0___5___1___15
0744-0840__0047+11__0.91__6.75__8____0___0___0___1___0___1___5___0___10

TOTALS:_____________3.91________39___4___2___1___8___1___2___13__1___46 
= 117

The first column (Period UT) refers to observing periods broken down as 
close as possible to one hour of true observing, in Universal Time. The 
second column (Field) is the area in in the sky where I centered my 
field of view. The third column (TEFF) represents effective observing 
time (corrected for breaks or any time I did not spent looking at the 
sky).  The next column (LM) is the average naked eye limiting 
magnitude, determined by triangle star counts. All following columns 
indicate the number of meteors for each shower observed.
------------------------

MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS:

SHOWER
______-3__-2__-1___0__+1__+2__+3__+4__+5__+6______AVE

PER____1___0___0___4___3___6___8___9___6___1_____+2.77
KCG____1___0___0___0___1___0___2___0___0___0_____+1.00
NIA____0___0___0___0___0___1___0___1___0___0_____+3.00
ANT____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___0_____+5.00
NDA____0___0___0___0___0___0___1___6___1___0_____+4.00
SIA____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___0___0_____+4.00
SDA____0___0___0___0___0___1___1___0___0___0_____+2.50
SPO____1___0___1___0___1___8__17__10__19___4_____+3.72

Note: Magnitude scale is to determine the brightness of sky objects. 
Magnitude -8 is comparable to a quarter moon, magnitude -4 with the 
planet Venus, magnitude -1 with the brightest star Sirius, magnitude +2 
to +3 with most average naked eye stars and magnitude +6 to +7 are the 
faintest stars the naked eye can see under typical dark conditions. A 
meteor of at least magnitude -3 is considered a fireball.  The above 
table contains the magnitudes from all observed meteors, and the 
average (last column) for showers.
------------------------

SKY OBSCURED (FOV): None

------------------------

Dead time: 50.15 min. for breaks

Breaks (UT): 3:57-4:00, 4:11-12, 4:21-22, 4:26-31, 4:34-36, 
4:41(30sec), 4:46(45sec), 4:57(45sec), 5:17-23, 5:35-40, 5:51-53, 
6:06-17, 6:30-32, 6:42-45, 6:51-54, 7:06(40sec), 7:20(20sec), 
7:25(1.5min), 7:37(20sec), 7:44(20sec), 8:08(30sec), 8:15(30sec)
-------------------------