(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
-------------------------
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