(meteorobs) Geminids peak from London - mini-outburst!?

[Leo S]

Hi all,

Due to flooding and generally bad conditions (plus the tail end of a 
cold), I made the decision to stay at home for the peak. To my surprise, 
after about 1:30UT the cloud mostly cleared away although it remained 
quite hazy, so I set up a DSLR to photograph the Southern sky from my 
window and watched from the comfort of my armchair :)

The LM was very poor due to the haze/light pollution/moon, although I 
was able to keep the moon out of my eyes. I could only just make out 
where the constellations were (at times!), but nevertheless I saw about 
20 Geminids in about 3.25 hours, many of them bright, though nothing 
above -5 or perhaps -6.

At around 2:45-2:55 UT there was what appeared to be a mini outburst, 
when I saw 4 Geminids in around 1.5 minutes, two of them fireballs. 
Otherwise, there were quite long gaps between seeing Geminids. Given my 
restricted view of the sky and the poor LM, this would suggest a ZHR 
well in excess of 160 if I'm not mistaken?!

I wish I had been able to get more accurate timings, and/or had been 
able to make a formal observation under better observing conditions, but 
under the circumstances I consider my self quite lucky to have seen 
anything at all.

There was one particularly memorable Geminid a bit later on that had a 
distinct blue green hue to it as it soared almost directly down and 
behind a tree. Although I estimate the brightness was around -5 mag., 
and it was almost right down the middle of the field of view of my 
camera, it doesn't seem to have recorded, probably due to the haze as 
well as the slow lens/ISO I had to use. The other Geminids I saw were 
all cool shade of blue-white in contrast to a golden-yellow Geminid I 
happened to see two nights earlier.

It was quite a strange night. The fog rolled in at around 4:00 UT, hung 
around for about 20 minutes, and then vanished as quickly as it had 
arrived. It then stayed relatively clear for about an hour after which 
the fog rolled in again, but decided to stay this time!

So far just two "faint" meteors found in the photographs from one memory 
card, but I still have  one more to look through. I've turned the photos 
into a time-lapse (just under 2.5 hours of  6 second exposures 
compressed into 40 seconds of footage - 66mb .avi) that can be found 
here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/13tvv5

I'll have to clean it up a bit, but that might take a while! Please note 
that there are no meteors visible in it, but if you are curious as to 
what clouds do at night, you might like it ;)

Leo