(meteorobs) Mojave Geminids Day 3 (Dec 14/15)

[Robert Lunsford]

After my eight hour marathon I slept in until noon. I may have slept longer 
but the sun was shining over the cab of my truck and I was beginning to 
cook. The noontime sky was perfectly clear. After a bite to eat I sat down 
and transcribed the data from the first two nights on to paper. Robin said 
he counted slightly more than 500 meteors last night. He writes everything 
down and I knew I was seeing many meteors while his light was on as he was 
writing data. This amounts for the discrepancy in our numbers.

Despite the 55F (13C) temperature the sun felt good so I just spent most of 
the afternoon relaxing while listening to the quiet desert. The only noise 
that could be heard was a couple of crows on a distant power pole. Other 
than that it was absolutely silent. Such a nice change of pace!

I ate an early dinner and wanted to use the telescope as soon as it became 
dark. The seeing was much better tonight and we looked at a lunar 
occultation plus a lot of faint clusters and galaxies. Even Uranus and 
Neptune were nice sights. Mars was too low in the east to present a good 
image.

After another couple of hours sleep we woke in time to start counting at 
10pm. The Geminids were still coming down at a pretty good clip and seemed 
brighter than the previous night. From 10 to 11pm I managed to count a total 
of 44 meteors with 38 of them being Geminids. At 1035pm there was a 
tremendous flash low in the northwest, away from our field of view. By the 
time I swung my head around to the right the meteor had vanished but I did 
see the 3 second train. This meteor was definitely brighter than our -7 from 
the previous night so Robin and I agreed that a -10 was a close magnitude 
estimate.

Between 11 and midnight I counted a total of 48 meteors with 44 of them 
being Geminid. The minor showers were scarce so far this evening. At 1132 
another bright flash occurred low in the northeast. This meteor seemed 
slightly fainter than the last so we gave it a -8. There was also a -4 
Geminid earlier in the hour.

Between midnight and 1am I counted 24 meteors. The lower count was due to a 
10 minute break to reload the video camera and to get up and stretch. 16 of 
the 24 meteors seen were Geminids with the brightest being a -1.

Between 1 and 2am I counted a total of 25 meteors. No breaks were taken 
during this period but I'll admit that I was becoming fatigued. The Geminid 
rates were still definitely falling as only 19 were seen. The brightest 
Geminid during this period was a -2.

Between 2 and 3am I counted a total of 36 meteors, 21 of  these being 
Geminids. 5 COM's were also seen during this hour. The brightest Geminid was 
a -1.

The last hour was a disaster as I could not keep my eyes open. The effective 
observing time during this period was probably close to 25% or 15 minutes of 
actual observing. I was just too tired to continue and signed off. I counted 
another 11 meteors during this time, 9 of them being Geminids. One of them 
was a -3.

Once I crawled out of the sleeping bag the frigid night air refreshened me 
and I had enough energy to take a quick peak at Mars and Saturn through the 
telescope. I'm glad I did as the seeing was steady and I had one of my 
finest ever views of Saturn. It was totally awesome and actually looked 
fake. The amount of detail visible was impressive. The most outstanding 
feature was the shadow of the rings projected on the globe. Five moons were 
also easily visible with Titan presenting an orange disk at high 
magnification. Mars was also impressive but much lower in the sky. The 
seeing there was not quiet as good plus the hemisphere turned toward the 
Earth at that time was unimpressive. The limb hazes on the now full disk 
were easily seen plus the large retreating north polar hood. I took many 
pictures of each object before calling it a night.

The meteor totals for the night were: 188 total, 147 GEMS, 3 ANT, 5 COM, 3 
DLM, 4 HYD, 1 MON, and 25 SPO.

The three night totals were 999 meteors, 827 of these being Geminids. It was 
a great trip, well worth the cool temperatures and the drive from the San 
Diego area.

Bob Lunsford