(meteorobs) PER Radio Scatter over Oklahoma = disappointing so far

[Paul Jones]

I certainly concur with you visually, James.   I got up at 4:45 EDT this
morning, the moon was still up in the west and the skies awash with
moonlight, but otherwise pretty clear.  So I hung in until skies darkened
about 5:15 EDT and watched for thirty minutes and saw only six PERs and five
non-PERs until 5:45 EDT!  The PERs were barely above the sporadic rate
visually!!
Considering that this morning was the last morning before the maximum, I'm
totally underwhelmed so far by what I've seen of the 2011 PERs.  Perhaps the
PER peak is more short-lived now than it used to be in the old days and you
have to be in just the right spot to see the high ZHRs,  Sort of like the
QUADs are.  I don't know and I'll hold final judgement until I can get a
solid look at them in a dark moon year, but it sure does have me wondering!

Clear skies, Paul in north Florida

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 8:17 AM, James Beauchamp <falcon99 at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

>   Doing a quick scan of the night's Spectrum captures, it appears the
> Persieds are pretty dismal so far.
>
> All hits overall (under-dense head-tail only, over-dense without head
> tails, head-tail + large spectral trail scatters) seem to occur in short
> groups of one or two over two-minute frames, then nothing for 8 to 12
> minutes.  Kind of erratic.  Overall I'm seeing an average of one hit every 5
> or so minutes.
>
> Last year at the peak I was getting average two per minute.
>
> Breaking the hits out further, it looks like two to three over-dense events
> per night, with a trend of slow increase this past week.  These are usually
> short fireball events somewhere in the sky whose  ion trails are wide and
> dense enough to scatter the lower-intensity sub-lobe energy (not in the main
> beam).  If the thunderstorms aren't over us, I usually capture these on the
> Sentinel Camera with audio and post.
> http://www.youtube.com/user/desertengineer1
>
> The Persieds also tend to cross the fence laterally, I think, which results
> in unique hits without head-tails - short-lived "blobs" on the center radar
> frequency.  I'm seeing one of those about every 2-10 minutes from 2-7 AM.
>
> Overall the scatter is disappointing.  Last year they were popping at least
> one to two per minute.  Maybe there will be better hits tonight.
>
>
>
>
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