(meteorobs) Observation November 17/18 2007

Sun Dec 2 12:03:36 EST 2007

Hello all,

Here's my belated report for the Saturday night November 17/18...

Looking forward to the late-night Leonids under a nice clear sky, I  
had the pleasure of joining several observers at Soike road, a dark  
site south-west of Cobden.  They were there mostly for deep sky  
observing, but would take on some of the Leonids as well.  Driving  
into Soike Road takes a bit of coordination if other observers are  
present there, and it's best to park one behind another (due to the  
rather narrow road).  That being said, several cars can be parked  
without any problems.  What a glorious night!  As soon as I stepped  
out of the car, I looked up and was mesmerized by the beauty of the  
winter constellations!  I then estimated the transparency at a solid  
4/5, and the limiting magnitude at 6.70.  It's been a while since  
I've seen such a deep dark winter sky.  I really could not have asked  
for a better night to evaluate the conditions!  The horizons are  
excellent in most directions.  There aren't any local lights to worry  
about too (except for the distant car headlights on a couple of rare  
occasions only).  The winter Milky Way was glowing, and the Comet  
Holmes was very evident near the bright star Alpha Persei (Mirfak).   
The comet looked huge in my 9x63mm binoculars.  As I was getting  
ready to observe, I discovered much to my dismay that (in my rush to  
load the car with too much stuff earlier in the day) I had left my  
observing accessory bag at home.  Grrr!!!  That meant that I had no  
red flashlights, no tape recorders and none of my meteor charts.   
Sanjeev and Shane were kind enough to lend me red flashlights and  
some pen and paper (so that I'd have a means of recording data).

For several hours, I kept busy trying deep sky observing and then  
with some astrophotography.  The temp reached -10C so manipulating  
things with gloves took more time and getting used to.  I managed to  
image Comet Holmes with my 300mm lens before switching to wide-field  
meteor photography.  See...
http://tinyurl.com/25awem
Later on, with a 19mm lens, I captured Comet Holmes in Perseus while  
a Leonid meteor streaked on the bottom right:
http://tinyurl.com/ywjanw

I had come with low expectations for this year's Leonids, and kept  
telling myself to be happy with an expected average of 5 or so per  
hour for this longitude.  But much to my delight, they performed  
significantly better!  With the radiant still very low, a few nice  
Leonid earthgrazers as well as a number of other meteors were seen  
even quite early in the night.  When I finally lied back on my lawn  
chair and "signed-on" just before 4am EST, the radiant (located in  
the Sickle of Leo) was now high up in the east.  I recorded meteors  
until just before 6am EST.  Due to having to write down all meteors  
and other data on paper (no tape recorder), this resulted in more  
"dead time" than usual.  Factoring breaks and all, I ended up with  
1.5 hours of effective meteor observing.  The Leonids were the most  
obvious activity with 33 members.  This made them more than twice as  
numerous than the sporadic background (but not as good of a display  
as October's Orionids).  They had a good mix of bright and faint  
meteors (ranging from mag 0 to +5).  A single mag -4 Leonid fireball  
flashed low in the east at 5:02am EST, but away from my field so it  
was just barely seen.  It had a brief terminal flash, and left a  
persistent train visible for 20 sec!  As well, some minor Alpha  
Monocerotids and Taurids activity was observed, but nothing from  
Sirko Molau's video radiants.  I can understand how people who were  
spoiled by those incredible Leonid displays between 1998-2002 could  
feel let down by this relative "sprinkle" of meteors.  But I was  
happy to take-in whatever the sky had to offer, and luckily, this  
turned out to be better-than-expected Leonids :)  (Not to mention  
that this was a great occasion to "test out" my winter gear, and cold  
weather endurance, in preparation for the upcoming Geminid shower :0)

All in all, an enjoyable and productive session.  Good clear nights  
in November don't come by very often, so this was a treat.

Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario

DATE: November 17/18 2007
BEGIN: 0850 UT (0350 EST) END: 1050 UT (0550 EST)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -76.78 West; Lat: 45.68 North  Elevation: 200 ft
City & Province: Soike road near Cobden, Ontario, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: pencil and paper method, cord align
----------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVED SHOWERS:_______________________________radiant position
NTA (North Taurids)_____________________________04:12 (063) +24
STA (South Taurids)_____________________________04:08 (062) +16
AMO (Alpha Monocerotids)________________________07:48 (117) +01
LEO (Leonids)___________________________________10:12 (153) +22
IAU (Iota Aurigids)_____________________________05:00 (075) +30
LOR (Lambda Orionids)___________________________05:28 (082) +15
SPO (sporadics)
----------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVING PERIODS: 0 = none seen; / = shower not observed

PERIOD(UT)___FIELD____Teff____F______LM___SPO_LEO_AMO_NTA_STA_IAU_LOR

0850-0950___0802+08___0.76___1.00___6.70____6__16___1___3___1___0___0
0950-1050___0858+09___0.75___1.00___6.70___10__17___2___0___0___0___0

TOTALS:_______________1.51_________________16__33___3___3___1___0___0  = 
  56

Note: The first column (Period UT) refers to observing periods broken  
down as close as possible to one hour of true observing, in Universal  
Time. The second column (Field) is the area in in the sky where I  
centered my field of view. The third column (TEFF) represents  
effective observing time (corrected for breaks or any time not spent  
looking at the sky). The column (LM) is the average naked eye  
limiting magnitude, determined by triangle star counts. All following  
columns indicate the number of meteors for each shower observed.
------------------------

MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS:

SHOWER
______-4__-3__-2__-1___0__+1__+2__+3__+4__+5__+6______AVE

LEO____1___0___0___0___6___4___5___6___6___4___1_____+2.36
SPO____0___0___0___0___0___2___2___2___6___4___0_____+3.50
AMO____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___2___0___0_____+3.66
NTA____0___0___0___0___0___0___1___2___0___0___0_____+2.67
STA____0___0___0___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___0_____+5.00

Note: Magnitude -8 is comparable to a quarter moon, magnitude -4 with  
the planet Venus, magnitude -1 with the brightest star Sirius,  
magnitude +2 to +3 with most average naked eye stars and magnitude +6  
to +7 are the faintest stars the naked eye can see under typical dark  
conditions. A meteor of at least magnitude -3 is considered a  
fireball. The above table contains the magnitudes from all observed  
meteors, and the average (last column) for showers.
------------------------

SKY OBSCURED (FOV) (UT):  none

------------------------

Dead time: 29.80 min (breaks + time spent recording each meteor)

Breaks (UT): 9:11-21, 10:27(30sec), 10:30-40

* Note: approx 10 sec TEFF subtracted for each meteor