(meteorobs) strange sight in Pegasus

Norman W. McLeod III nmcleod at peganet.com
Fri Aug 20 21:06:35 EDT 2004


>do you know "perseus flasher"? Before ten or twenty years was some
>discussion about similar phenomenom.

This goes back to the early 1980's.  It began as the  "Aries Flasher"  at 
the insistence of one individual.


>that time they tried to explain these flashes as optical flash
>of gamma burst... probabably bad explanation.


Definitely was.  Bradley Schaffer ran an experiment with a number of people 
including me.  Record all flashes seen for a set period of time.  People 
were seeing flashes all over the sky, me included.  I had a word with the 
man in the hot seat (S&T description some years back), Brian Marsden, about 
this after it slipped into one of the journals.  Both of us felt a little 
embarrassed that it got past the referees.  After 1970 or so, man-made 
flashes became numerous enough to become an annoyance.  Fortunately it is 
quite easy to distinguish them from stationary meteors.  A repeat flash 
gives it away.  Their sharpness and brevity are also unlike meteors.

Norman


Norman W. McLeod III
Staff Advisor
American Meteor Society

Fort Myers, Florida
nmcleod at peganet.com




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