(meteorobs) Meteor Obs. 03/22/09 - Mathias, WVa

[George Gliba]

      Screech Owl Hill Observatory, Mountain Meadows
         Mathias, West Virginia 385710N 0785544W
                  March 21/22, 2009

   We had a nice clear night, with very good to excellent
transparence this past Saturday/Sunday night. The Zodiacal
Light was easy to see after dark, and later the Zodiacal
Band was seen. Later, unexpected meteor activity was seen
from a radiant near beta or theta Leonis, which I will call
beta Leonids (BLE). They were distictly medium-slow meteors
similar to the Taurids in speed.

   From 6:03 to 8:03 UT I observed 30 meteors, 5 of which
came from a radiant near the star Denebola. There was an
apparent mini-outburst of 4 of them from 6:06 to 6:27 UT
(21 minutes), followed by the last one seen at 6:50 UT. None
were seen the second hour of observation. I wish I had been
out a bit earlier. Perhaps some Video cameras picked-up some
activity from this region earlier?

  Time (UT)  LM  %Obst. BLE ANT NPX SPX SPO Total    FOV
06:03-07:03  6.6    0%   5   3   1   1   8   18   14.0 +10
07:03-08:03  6.4    0%   0   1   1   1   9   12   15.0 +10


Magnitude Distributions (06:03-08:03 UT - LM=6.5)

     0   1   2   3   4   5  total Ave.
BLE  0   2   0   2   1   0    5   2.4
ANT  0   1   1   0   1   1    4   3.0   
NPX  0   0   0   1   1   0    2   3.5     
SPX  0   1   1   0   0   0    2   1.5
SPO  0   3   2   5   5   2   17   3.1

Clear Skies,
GWG