(meteorobs) Meteor Obs. June 14-15, Mathias, WVa

[George Gliba]

          Screech Owl Hill Observatory, Mountain Meadows
             Mathias, West Virginia 385710N 0785544W
                       June 13/14 & 14/15, 2010

    We were lucky to have two nights of partly clear skies to do some
meteor observing and comet watching. I was able to get in two hours on
June 13/14 from 4:00 to 6:00 UT under partly cloudy conditions with fair
to good transparency. The next night, it was more cloudy and I was only 
able to get in an hour watch from 5:25 to 6:25 UT with poor to fair (35%
clouds) transparency and a 5.2 LM. I was looking for JLY and XDR meteors,
but saw few, or virtually none.

    However, we were more lucky to get good views of comet McNaught R2,
which was about 5th magnitude and had a 2 degree tail in 12x63 binoculars.
Also as a bonus, I was lucky to see a -5 magnitude fireball below Jupiter
at 3:30 UT that ended about 5 degrees above the ESE horizon, that was a
nice blue-yellow-green color, just minutes after I first saw the comet on
the morning of June 14th.

Date    Time (UT)  LM   %Obst. ANT  JLY  XDR  SPO Total   FOV     Comments 
6/14/10 4:00-5:00  6.2   15%    1    1    0    7    9   various  some haze 
6/14/10 5:00-6:00  6.2   20%    1    1    0    5    7   various  some haze

6/15/10 5:25-6:25  5.2   35%    2    0    1    7   10   various  very hazy

Magnitude Distributions (June 13/14, 4:00-6:00 UT, 18% clouds, LM=6.2)

    -1   0   1   2   3   4   5  total Ave.
ANT  0   0   1   0   0   1   0    2   2.5                  
JLY  0   0   0   0   1   1   0    2   
3.5                                      
XDR  0   0   0   0   0   0   0    0   N/A
SPO  0   1   0   2   4   2   3   12   3.3

Magnitude Distributions (June 14/15, 5:25-6:25 UT, 35% clouds, LM=5.2)

    -1   0   1   2   3   4   5  total Ave.
ANT  0   2   0   0   0   0   0    2   1.0  
JLY  0   0   0   0   0   0   0    0   N/A 
XDR  0   0   0   0   1   0   0    1   3.0  
SPO  1   0   0   3   2   1   0    7   2.1
  
Clear Skies,
GWG