(meteorobs) Perseids

[Arlene Carol]

Hi Bruce

Thank you for these kind words. I've come to accept my role here as someone
bringing a new and different perspective to my neighbors. Some seem to be
living in a different century than most of us. I just had this discussion
with my closest neighbor here this morning..actually, we were talking about
'dress codes' for the ladies as opposed to the way men are allowed to appear
in public especially in hot summer months.

I also wanted to mention that I've learned of a young man in a village
about  45 minutes from here who is a shephard but  is an AVID
astronomer...he is poor, as one might expect and has built his own
telescope! I hope to meet him in the coming weeks to see what he's done and
learn how much he really knows about the heavens. He needs some encouraging
I think...young people like this are as rare as 'point meteors' !! ;-))

As for what we saw...it was a brief flash so it was probably a flare...even
though it was in the radiant...

I do want to tell you about a very strange set of meteors I observed 5 years
ago from my other house in this region prior to restoring this house and
moving here. My other house was closer to the Aegean (i'm 10 KM inland here)
and the roof of the house was flat so on observing nights, i was able to go
up to the roof and watch with a spectacular 360* viewing area...and that was
before they installed street lights so it was quite a good observatory.

it was during the 2000 Perseid Shower...i don't recall how long i was
outside but i saw an 'earth grazer' to my left.. a very long almost
horizontal meteor with a long train.  Within 5 minutes, i saw it's
'mirror-image' off to my right! i was very surprised at this. nearly
identical meteors, 5 minutes apart.
one to my left, one to my right...it was quite exciting. unfortunately,
there was no one around to share my excitement with!

thanks again for your kind words. they encourage me to continue ...

Arlene & Co.
south of Troy

On 8/12/06, Bruce McCurdy <bmccurdy at telusplanet.net> wrote:
>
>     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
>     *****
>
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