(meteorobs) Perseid fever

[Bruce McCurdy]

    "We should watch for the meteorite shower!" the lady behind me said to her friend, speaking loudly to be heard over the sound of the music emanating from the main stage of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. "They're supposed to come from that constellation just below the W."

    With that description (the second part, at least!) I realized she must have heard my own words, issued early this morning on CBC Radio One, in which I had specifically encouraged Folk Fest goers to keep their head up. For the second straight evening we had far from perfect skies, but when you have 20,000 people gathered outside in the night air, I figure they might as well look. It was very gratifying to hear evidence that the message had gotten through. 

    The sucker holes that we got last night weren't too conducive to observing of any kind, but I got four marginal meteors from Gallagher Park. At the very end it was starting to clear off nicely, and when at 2330 I was finally getting my first clear view of the ISS/Endeavour (with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams on board) a nice Perseid flashed beneath it.  And with that, I had the bug, and my plan to wait until Saturday and Sunday nights to pursue dark skies for my 20th Perseid season evaporated. My "ride" to the Fest lives in the east end of Edmonton, so I headed east but compromised on an intermediate dark site at Strathcona Wilderness Centre maybe 20 minutes (each way) from my preferred location in Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve. I figured my time was limited, I'd rather spend that time observing. I wanted to check out this site anyway, since the SWC has expressed interest in being included in BHDSP, and I found it to be acceptable with the Milky Way prominent and Cygnus Rift easily visible. 

    I had lots of layers, but I had stupidly left my talking watch and microcassette at home, so I scrabbled around in my trunk and found a dim red flashlight, some bright white sheets of poster board, and a Sharpie. It cost me about 15-20 seconds per meteor but otherwise worked fine for recording details of each meteor. I couldn't find a clear channel for the radio scatter method, and since the birds were silent I simply listened to CKUA and allowed my body to become (further) suffused with music as  I watched and waited. 

    I didn't have to wait very long, as the sky was pleasantly active with 50 total meteors in two hours Teff, summarized below. The best meteors seemed to accompany the best songs: two negative magnitude streakers to a nice ambient tune by the Pocket Orchestra called "Night Sight", and esp. an outburst of five in two minutes including three negative magnitude beauties during Jeff Buckley's definitive interpretation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", a song firmly ensconced on my personal all-time top ten. The fourth and the fifth of these were particularly notable, a -2 falling down the Milky Way into Perseus followed a beat later by a -1 lifting in the opposite direction, shooting up the Milky Way near the zenith towards Deneb. Strangely reminiscent of the song's first stanza: 

            "I heard there was a secret chord
            that David played, and it pleased the Lord
                    but you don't really care for music, do ya?
            Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
            the minor fall and the major lift,
                    the baffled king composing Hallelujah!" 

    I'm no king, but I'm baffled too. :)  For a couple of transcendent minutes, sky imitated art. 

    Bruce
    *****
 

Observer: Bruce McCurdy
Date: 2007 August 11, 0725 - 0940 UT; Teff = 2.0 hours
Location: Strathcona Wilderness Centre (gate), Range Road 212, Township Road 530
53.541 deg N., 113.000 deg. W.
Conditions: clear except low cloud and aurora to north, city sky glow to west
Limiting magnitude: ~5.9 throughout
Direction faced: southeast, centred on Alpheratz
***

0725-0832; Teff = 1.0 hr.
PER (13):  -3 (1), -2 (3), -1 (2), +1 (2), +2(1), +3 (2), +4 (1), +5 (1)
SDA (1): +1 (1)
CAP (1): +4 (1)
KCY (1): +1
SPO (9): 0 (1), +1 (1), +2 (1), +3 (3), +4 (2), +5 (1)
Total meteors: twenty-five
***

0832-0940; Teff = 1.0 hr.
PER (18):  -3 (1), -2 (3), -1 (1), +1 (1), +2 (2), +2 (2), +3 (1), +4 (6), +5 (3)
SDA: none
CAP: none
KCY (1): 0 (1)
SPO (6): -2 (1), +2 (2), +3 (1), +4 (2)
Total meteors: twenty-five
***

Summary 0725-0940; Teff = 2.0 hr.
PER (31): -3 (2), -2 (6), -1 (3), ... +1 (3), +2 (3), +3 (3), +4 (7), +5 (4)
SDA (1): +1 (1)
CAP (1): +4 (1)
KCY (2): 0 (1), +1 (1)
SPO (15): -2 (1), 0 (1), +1 (1), +2 (3), +3 (4), +4 (4), +5 (1)
Total meteors: fifty
*****

Notes: 

12 meteors (11 PER, 1 SPO) of negative magnitude
11 meteors (9 PER, 2 SPO) with fading trains of 1 s or longer (max. 3 s)
Algol on the rise from a minimum (looked it up later and minimum was predicted for 0632 UT)

Time/Shower/ Mag/Notes
--------------------------------------
0725  start
0726  PER  +2   brief train
0727  PER  +1      "
0730  SDA  +1  wide train
0731  SPO  +4
0733  CAP  +4
0734  KCY  +1 brief train, pure white
0738  PER  -2  fading train 1.5 s
0745  SPO  +5
0750  PER  +1  brief train
0755  SPO  +3
0805  PER  -3  flashed white, faded orange, fading train 3 s
0812  SPO  +2
0813  PER  -1  orange ("Hallelujah" just beginning)
0814  SPO  +4
0815  PER  +3
0815  PER  -2  fading train 1 s 
0815  PER  -1  brief train   (two meteors about 1s apart, in Milky Way on opposite sides of the radiant)
0821  PER  -2  fading train 1 s
0821  PER  +3 
0823  PER  +4
0824  PER  +5
0829  SPO  +3
0829  SPO  +4  (two meteors about 1 s apart in same area of the sky)
0830  SPO   0   very short, <1 degree long; fading train 1 s
0831  SPO  +1
0832  end first hour Teff
0834  PER  +4
0835  PER  +5
0835  PER  +4
0840  PER  +5
0847  SPO  +4
0848  PER  +2  fading train 1.5 s (missed original meteor, observed train only)
0850  KCY   0   brief train, pure white, majestically slow!
0852  PER  -3   medium bright, then briefly invisible before bright flash at the end, like it "skipped"
0853  PER  +2
0856  PER  +4
0856  SPO  +2  <1 degree long
0858  PER  -2  fading train 2.5 s
0858  PER  -1  fading train 1 s  
0900  PER  +4
0902  SPO  +2
0904  PER  +3
0906  PER  -2  near radiant, ~1 degree long; fading train 1 s, beautiful!
0907  PER  +5
0913  SPO  -2  fading train 1 s, golden
0917  SPO  +3
0920  PER  +4
0923  PER  +4
0931  PER  -2  fading train 1.5 s, bronze
0933  PER  +1
0940  SPO  +4
0940  end
***