(meteorobs) 2011 SDA observations from north Florida this morning

[Paul Jones]

Greetings all,
      After many, many nights of cloudiness, a nice piece of the Bermuda
High is wedging in on us here in north Florida just in time for some SDA
observations.  Color me happy!   So, I ventured out into the pre dawn this
morning for an hour of meteor watching before heading off to work.  I was
well rewarded with a busy and pleasurable session indeed.  I managed to hit
double figures on the SDAs and three of them were lovely +1s with varying
tones of yellow and a couple of others were +2 with long paths.  Overall a
solid performance from them.  A total of 32 meteors in an hour is not too
shabby.  I also confirm Wes's impressions from Oregon of high sporadic rates
going on as I bagged 16 in just one hour this morning.   They were zipping
around the sky coming from all directions it seemed!  Here's the data:

 Date:  Jul 28/29, 2011
Location:  5 miles SW of St. Augustine, Florida  Long 81  33 W, Lat 29 09 N
8:30 - 9:30 UT (0430 - 0530 EDT)  Teff - 1.0 F- 1.00, Lm - 6.2  20% horizon
obstruction (trees), facing south CFOV:  RA 350  Dec +10  Counting/paper
method

10 SDA
1 PAU
1 NDA
4 PER
16 SPO

32 TOTAL METEORS

 and... 11 artificial satellites  (I counted everything that moved...;o).

Magntiudes:

SDA - +1 (3), +2 (2), +3 (2), +4 (2), +5 (1)
PAU - +2 (1)
NDA - +3 (1)
PER - +3 (2), +4 (2)
SPO - +1 (2), +2 (2), +3 (5), =$ (4), +5 (3)

I was a bit disappointed not to see any CAPs during the hour, but their
radiant was way past the meridian and low in the west while I was out.  The
early Perseids I saw were not very impressive at all, although four in one
hour two weeks form the maximum is nothing to get too upset about!  Plenty
of time for them to improve.  The one PAU was quite impressive with a very
long path indeed.
Overall, a very nice session with temps in the mid-seventies and mosquito
activity was not too bad by Florida standards.  It was so nice to be able to
observe in shorts and a tee shirt from my driveway.  Hopefully, more obs to
come this weekend.

Clear skies to all, Paul in north Florida
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.meteorobs.org/pipermail/meteorobs/attachments/20110729/0d0a57ba/attachment-0001.html