(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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