(meteorobs) Observation September 15/16 2004

Pierre Martin dob14.5 at sympatico.ca
Sat Sep 18 11:25:58 EDT 2004


I had a great time at Bootland Farm this past Wednesday/Thursday 
morning Sept 15/16.  It was a productive and enjoyable night of 
observing...

When I arrived at the site just after sunset, I was greeted by Tom 
Bootland himself who was there with his family.  Rick Dalrymple was 
there too.  At first, I was worried about the sky quality because it 
seemed to have a haze or air pollution.  It was also very humid.  But, 
as it got dark a nice breeze picked up and it really seemed to "clean 
up" the atmosphere.  It turned out to be a very decent and transparent 
night!  The rest of the night would have varying amounts of dew, wind 
and fog.  It was strange in that a warm breeze would pick up and the 
dew/fog would disappear entirely only to return later on.

Rick and I had lots of fun using my 80mm Megrez refractor and 
binoculars.  Under the clear dark skies, I was surprised at the amount 
of details we could see in many deep sky objects - a lot more than I 
expected for the aperture!  We toured many of the skies finest 
objects... M13, M92, M15, M22, M20, M8, M16, M17, M31, M32, M110, 
double-cluster in Perseus, M11, M71, M27, M57, the North America (with 
OIII filter), the Veil nebula (all three sections visible with OIII), 
Albireo, Garnet star, M45, and I know there's more that escapes my 
mind!

We also had a good showing of artificial satellites including a 
predicted ISS and also a predicted NOSS (triplet) that came by right on 
schedule!!  The NOSS was especially cool to follow through the 
refractor at low power (14X), all three satellites were visible at 
once.  They took several minutes to glide into the skies, and were 
brighter than what Heavens-Above predicted.  The second NOSS triplet 
pass was not seen despite Rick and I doing several sweeps of the skies 
at the predicted time.

Just shortly after Rick left to go back home, at exactly 11:35pm EDT, I 
saw the ground lit up with a huge green flash!!!!  I looked up and high 
in the north-east in Camelopardalis, I saw the end path of a huge 
fireball!  I estimated it at magnitude -7 or -8 or so.  It left behind 
a vividly bright glowing green train of about 20 degrees long that 
persisted for over 50 long seconds!!!  The train slowly twisted as time 
went by.  The meteor was probably sporadic in origin and had a very 
fast velocity.  Unfortunately, I was not yet "signed-on" so I was not 
ready to plot the path.  I signed-on for meteor observing just after 
midnight for almost four hours teff.  The transparency was very good.  
The zodiacal band (gegenshein) was visible along with M33 faintly to 
the naked eye!  At the start of the meteor watch, I estimated the 
limiting magnitude at 6.6 which is among the best nights I've seen at 
this site.

I recorded as many as 62 meteors.  No less than six meteors looked like 
good candidates for the possible September Taurids!  I plotted only one 
possible Aries-Triangulid.  There were also quite a few antihelions 
(Piscids).

There was one really scary moment halfway in the night when my 
micro-cassette recorder suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure.  
When I realized this, I tried to eject the tape and it refused!  After 
several minutes, I finally succeeded in yanking the tape out of the 
crippled device.  Thank goodness no data loss occured, especially 
because I had several nights of data recorded on it!  I switched to my 
back-up tape recorder and was then able to procceed with the session.  
Phew!

The other meteor highlights included...

- A 50 degrees long earthgrazer of mag -1 at 12:35am EDT that shot like 
a bullet into the zenith, sporadic, very swift, blue with 4 seconds 
train.

- Another earthgrazer of more than 40 degrees long, but faint at mag 
+4, at 12:51am EDT that would be a candidate for September Taurid!  
Almost looked somewhat nebulous - fragmenting?

- At 1:42am EDT a mag -2 vividly colored *BLUE* long sporadic.

Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario



DATE: September 15/16 2004
BEGIN: 0410 UT (0010 EDT)  END: 0920 UT (0520 EDT)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -76 29' West; Lat: 45 23' North  Elevation: 400 ft
City & Province: Bootland Farm, Ontario, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: talking clock/tape recorder, plotting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVED SHOWERS:_____________________________________radiant position
		KAQ (Kappa Aquarids)___________________________22:12 -07
		ANT (antihelions or Piscids)___________________00:16 +02
		ATR (Aries-Triangulids)________________________02:00 +29
		DAU (Delta Aurigids)___________________________04:08 +47
		NPX (sporadics from north apex)________________05:16 +38
		SPX (sporadics from south apex)________________05:16 +08
		SET (possible September Taurids?)______________?
		SPO (random sporadics)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

PERIOD(UT)_FIELD____Teff__LM____KAQ_ANT_ATR_DAU_NPX_SPX_SET_SPO

0410-0516__0046+15__1.00__6.60___0___2___0___2___0___1___1___9
0516-0647__0105+14__1.00__6.54___0___2___0___0___0___0___2___10
0647-0800__0306+13__1.15__6.43___0___3___1___1___5___3___2___10
0844-0920__0438+12__0.58__6.32___0___1___0___0___1___2___1___3

TOTALS:_____________3.73_________0___8___1___3___6___6___6___32 = 62

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
_______-2__-1___0__+1__+2__+3__+4__+5__+6______AVE

SPO_____1___1___0___0___7___8__13__11___3_____+3.64
ANT_____0___0___0___1___1___1___4___1___0_____+3.38
ATR_____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___0_____+5.00
DAU_____0___0___0___0___1___0___1___1___0_____+3.66
SET_____0___0___1___1___0___0___2___2___0_____+3.16

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: 41.83 min (including 12 min plots)

Breaks (UT): 5:55-6:13, 6:19 (30sec), 6:28-38, 7:02-03, 7:28 (20sec),
8:00-44

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




More information about the Meteorobs mailing list