(meteorobs) Perseid peak night (August 12/13) report - ATAJU

[Jure Atanackov]

Hello!

Here's my late report for the Perseid peak night, which I spent with 50+
observers and casual watchers at our youth astronomy camp on Mala Kopa in the
Pohorje mountains. About 10 observers, most of them with previous experience
(some a lot) recorded meteor data, while about 30 others made their first ever
meteor observations per IMO major shower method. Javor got lost somewhere in the
large group, I only heard him a couple of times during the entire night. We
enjoyed good, mostly clear skies, with only occasional intrustions by scattered
clouds. The sky was quite dark, my LM went down to 7.0, even 7.2 in the zenith
and the Summer milky way displayed much structure. The Zodiacal band was also
quite prominent, running from Aquarius, through Pisces and Aries into Taurus,
past the Pleiades and across the Winter milky way into the bright cone of
zodiacal light in Gemini. M33 was an obvious naked eye object even still fairly
low in the east. The view close to the horizon was spoiled by light domes in all
directions. 

Average limiting magnitude 6.9-7.0. Thats about as good as I've ever had during
a Perseid peak. One would therefore expect the Perseids to put on an excellent
display. Not quite. It was good, but it never became really exciting. The
average rate after midnight was about 1 per minute, with occasional periods
going up to 2 per minute. The 2005 peak was stronger, while the 2004 peak was
much stronger (under a sky half a magnitude worse). In fact, this was the
weakest Perseid peak I've seen so far. This might have been due to the peak
arriving later, unfortunately the following night was cloudy and we couldn't see
whether the rates were still high or not.

Ok. Rant mode off. We did get to see some really nice meteors. Among the best
were a -5 brilliant bluegreen and a stunning yellow-orange -6 Perseid fireballs
in Cepheus, close to the radiant just before local midnight. They appeared only
3 minutes apart. Both appeared close to the center of my field of view and I got
a really good look at both. They produced bright flashes and persistent trains
that lasted almost 20 seconds. Cepheus was an unusually productive area this
night, with several -2's and -1's also appearing there. Simon, who was observing
nearby and operating a Canon 300D (pointed towards Pegasus, where a most
remarkable drought of bright meteors took place) remarked quite early in the
night 'I really hope someone's got his camera pointed there...'. Later in the
night several more fireballs appeared, including a beautiful yellow -4 Perseid
in Cassiopea. My final four meteors in the last two minutes of observation were
-2, -2, -1 and -2 Perseids. There was also some activity from northern and
southern apex, with what looked like displaced Perseids appearing later in the
morning. Other minor showers were present with low rates and no noteworthy
meteors (no flashbulb Kappa Cygnids for us, unfortunately). The sporadics were
also good with rates around 17 to 25 per hour.

All in all, I saw 572 meteors in 5.78h teff, of these 430 were Perseids.

Clear skies!
Jure A.

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