(meteorobs) FW: 5th magnitude "ceiling"

Wes Stone howard048 at centurytel.net
Tue Oct 24 20:29:47 EDT 2006


Richard,

Robert Lunsford gives a good explanation of the difficulty of seeing a faint 
moving object. The faintest meteor observed will always be significantly 
brighter than the limiting magnitude. That said, I had excellent skies this 
weekend (as good as 7.2 near the center of my field, even if averaging a 
couple of count areas gave a slightly dimmer LM) and saw four 
sixth-magnitude meteors in 7.25 hours of observing.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Taibi" <rjtaibi at hotmail.com>
To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 2:28 PM
Subject: (meteorobs) FW: 5th magnitude "ceiling"


> Let me complete my thought!  I sent the original message below when I 
> meant to "save draft."
>
> My point was that inspecting all of the reports observers posted, and for 
> those who reported nearly +7 magnitude skies, no one reported seeing a 
> sixth magnitude meteor.  To be sure, there were many fifth magnitudes.  It 
> strikes me as being odd that there was almost a two-magnitude margin 
> between the faintest observed meteors and the limiting magnitude.
> 


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