(meteorobs) 2010 Perseids from Jasper National Park - Aug 11/12

[Bruce McCurdy]

    After losing all of the pre-peak build-up to persistent forest fire smoke that left my total "count" at a frustrating 0 Perseids as of August 10, I spent the three nights surrounding the peak in beautiful Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Thankfully, the darn smoke was nowhere to be seen. My luck was so-so, with variable cloud the first night, unmitigating rain showers on the peak night, and then almost wall-to-wall clear skies on the night after. 

    When the skies were clear they were nothing short of spectacular. I located a fine observing site above the Whistler's Campground at about 1200 metres altitude. My sky quality meter gave consistent readings of about 21.8, and by eye I estimated a limiting magnitude of about 6.7. 

    On that first night I was out for about three hours, but lost about half of that to significant cloud cover. I wound up with only 1.5 hours of Teff (effective observing time) split into four irregular bins, and much of that had 20-30% cloud cover in my field of view which hampered but didn't invalidate my observations. But there were two 15-minute intervals of wide-open skies which absolutely breathtaking. The natural slope of the mountainside had me looking directly along the axis of the Milky Way, and for one who has spent the summer in a city-bound observatory it was a very welcome sight.   

    I counted 47 "official" Perseids in those 90 minutes and just 6 other meteors. Of the Perseids only 6 were of magnitude 0 or brighter, maxing out with a couple of -3 flashes including a beautiful blue-white meteor with a very short trail very near the radiant point. A few of the other bright meteors displayed some colour, which I noted as "silvery-white", "blue-green", "pure white" and "bronze-yellow". Average magnitude of all observed meteors was +2.1. By far the brightest thing I saw was a near-instantaneous point flash of estimated mag -5 in Vulpecula which I attributed to a satellite glint. 

    Rather than detail all my observations here, I'll simply direct those who might be interested to the summary report I submitted to IMO: http://umdb.urania.be/v2/obsview/view.php?id=6986
 
    With the clouds having truly socked in around 4 a.m. I gave it up as a lost cause and headed back for the cabin, still in the pitch-dark. As I reached the Icefields Parkway I saw a pair of coyotes in the ditch that put me on high alert for wildlife. I slowed down to about 20 km/h below the speed limit, and a good thing I did, because a couple minutes later an elk cow emerged from the brush and stopped directly in my lane just a few tens of metres ahead of the car. I was forced to come to a complete stop, but if I had been going at cruising speed that may well have been a "dead" stop, at least for one of us. This NEA (Near Elk Adventure) was a good reminder of how careful we astronomers need to be when doing our night-driving in pursuit of dark skies. 

    Bruce
    *****