(meteorobs) Observation October 28/29 2005

[Pierre Martin]

Hi all,

Here's my formal meteor report for last night's outing.  When the skies 
suddenly cleared in the late night hours, I scrambled and went out to 
Boundary road (site east of Ottawa) for a quick two hours of meteor 
observing.  I wished I could have done more, but my eyelids did not 
cooperate.  The skies looked beautiful with Orion, the winter Milky Way 
and Mars blazing high up in the south.  Greg Baggs joined me with his 
4" refractor to observe Mars.  As mentioned before, in those two hours 
the Taurids put on some nice rates and better than I would have 
expected.  Of the 16 Taurids, 12 came from the southern radiant and 4 
from the north radiant.  The Taurids also produced three fireballs and 
some fairly bright meteors, but the very faint meteors were also 
present.  I can't recall having ever seen this number of Taurids in two 
hours in a late October night.  The Orionids was the only other 
activity besides sporadics and four faint swift meteors came out of the 
radiant.  A total of 34 meteors recorded.  The highlights...

- At 6:22UT (2:22 EDT), a stunning mag -5 south Taurid fireball dropped 
down and lit up the north-east sky.  It was blue-white, travelled a 
long 30 degrees as it fragmented and flared along the way.

- At 6:44UT (2:44 EDT), a beautiful mag -3 blue south Taurid appeared 
in the south-west, and less than three seconds later another fireball 
appeared in the same sky area!  This time, a mag -3 white north Taurid 
with 4 secs train.

- Another highlight was a long earthgrazing sporadic at 5:43UT (1:43 
EDT) that shot across the zenith, travelling over 60 degrees.  It never 
got brighter than mag +3 but the path was impressive.  Seconds later, 
another fairly long meteor (20deg) went by.

Mars was looking beautiful in Greg's refractor, and I enjoyed some 
wonderful rich-field views of the Pleiades and the Orion nebula.  Lots 
of nice details.  I'm looking forward to tonight, to see what the 
Taurids will be up to.

Clear skies,

Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario


DATE: October 28/29 2005
BEGIN: 0500 UT (0100 EDT)  END: 0715 UT (0315 EDT)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -75.063 West; Lat: 45.269 North  Elevation: 300 ft
City & Province: Boundary road, Ontario, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: talking clock/tape recorder, plotting & cord align
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVED SHOWERS:_____________________________________radiant position
		ANT (North and South Taurids)__________________03:28 +19
		ORI (Orionids)_________________________________06:44 +16
		SPO (random sporadics)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

PERIOD(UT)_FIELD____Teff__LM_____SPO_STA_NTA_ORI

0500-0611__0327+09__1.01__6.23____9___7___3___3
0611-0715__0456+13__1.02__6.21____5___5___1___1

TOTALS:_____________3.00__________14__12__4___4  = 34

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
______-5__-4__-3__-2__-1___0__+1__+2__+3__+4__+5_____AVE

SPO____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___6___6___1_____+3.50
STA____1___0___1___1___0___1___2___1___0___2___3_____+1.42
NTA____0___0___1___0___0___1___0___1___1___0___0_____+0.50
ORI____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___1___2_____+4.25

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

F = 1.00

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

Dead time: 12 min (breaks) + 1.66 min (plots) = 13.66 min total

Breaks (UT): 5:31-40, 6:40-43

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