(meteorobs) Aurigids from CA: bright, nice - but not many

Daniel Fischer dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de
Sat Sep 1 10:25:57 EDT 2007


Here's the raw deal from Fremont Peak, California, before going to
bed (it's 7:15 a.m. now :-): Three observers saw 30 to 38 Aurigids each
tonight in about 1 1/2 hours under perfect conditions. There was one
striking cluster of three within one second and close to each other,
otherwise there were often long lulls. But the Aur were nearly all
bright and had nice wakes (though no persistent trains). There was no
pronounced maxiumum at either 11:36 or 11:33 (as the latest models
said) UTC, rather here are my counts for 5-minute intervals from
11:10 to 12:20 UTC (several more Aur were seen between 10:38 and
11:10 UTC, but not counted systematically):

2 - 5 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 0 - 0 - 2 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 0 - 0 (then dawn came).

So for us the peak came early, at 11:15 UTC perhaps. And another
strange observation: In the first half of the outburst, most meteors
were high in the sky - and in the 2nd most every meteor was very low
in the sky. Certainly just a statistical fluke, right ...?

Daniel signing off from San Juan Bautista, CA, USA


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