(meteorobs) perseids and the full moon

[Ian & Ronnie]

Right on

Ian & Ronnie
ianronny1 at bigpond.com
0428211018

On 04/07/2011, at 2:24 PM, Chris Peterson wrote:

> Your experience is different from mine. At my high altitude location, 
> the sky is black 45° from the full Moon. If I'm out of direct moonlight, 
> I can see stars magnitude 3 or even dimmer over most of the sky. My 
> meteor camera, which is sensitive to mag 1, catches only a few more 
> meteors in a moonless year than in one with a full Moon, and my eye 
> still beats the camera.
> 
> Of course, technicalities aside, I think you might be confusing what 
> "fun" is to a serious meteor watcher, and what "fun" is to a bunch of 
> Boy Scouts on a camping trip! <g>
> 
> Chris
> 
> *******************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
> 
> On 7/3/2011 8:07 PM, dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de wrote:
>> 
>> But it's no fun - and tiring to the eyes - to stare at the bright blue sky
>> a full moon creates. In 2003 the Perseids coincided exactly with full
>> moon, and I had - otherwise - perfect conditions in Turkey. Yet the
>> moonlit sky was so unpleasant to monitor visually that I soon quit and
>> rather had a video camera do the work. Which saw 42 meteors in one hour,
>> quite a lot for an unintensified system. The rate I had seen visually was
>> much lower. (IMO never calculated a ZHR for that year AFAIK, so the nice
>> video data were useless for cross-calibration purposes in the end.)
>> 
>> Then the 2000 Leonids peak was also strongly moonlit - and IMO analysts
>> discovered that those who had clear skies and thus stared continuously had
>> a significantly lower meteor perception that those who only encountered a
>> hole in the clouds now and then. The lesson thus would be to hope for
>> clouds (just kidding) or to rest your eyes frequently.
>> 
>> Dan
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