(meteorobs) Perseids

[Bruce McCurdy]

    Arlene south of Troy wrote:

> this isn't too 'scientific' (i'm intimidated by all of you with a lot more
> skill at this than i possess) but i wanted to feed in our observations.
> since coming to this part of the world, i've been 'influencing' the local
> shephards and they too are now gazing skywards more often and reporting 
> back
> to me. since they spend most of the night outside, they see more on a
> regular basis than i do...

    Arlene, if "all" you have done is influence others to look skywards, you 
should be proud of an important accomplishment, whether it's "scientific" or 
not. With the greatest of due respect to science, there is much more to this 
life and this Universe than *just* science. As your shepherd friends well 
know.

> i saw two 'flashes' of light that were either 'head on' meteors or
> satellites...hard to tell since the moon was rising...they only briefly 
> lite
> up in the night sky. i would have thought that a bollide would be much
> brighter...i guess i'll know when i see one, right?

    In my experience point meteors are rare; I've logged probably 5000 
meteors over the past two decades, and I'd say fewer than 10 of them were 
true point meteors. (Anecdotes welcome, statistics to back them up even more 
so.) The chance of seeing two of them is remote. Were they on the radiant? 
Or is it more likely they were Iridium flares? How long did these flashes 
last?

    Cloudy/rainy here in Edmonton but the forecast for Saturday night/Sunday 
morning (6-12 hours beyond the peak) is encouraging. I'm looking forward to 
recording at least some non-zero number of meteors for the 19th consecutive 
August 12.

    Bruce
    *****