(meteorobs) Point Meteor or Flaring Satelite

orink at t6b.com orink at t6b.com
Fri Oct 14 01:13:00 EDT 2011


Hi, Dave:

  I believe I had a similar experience, but during the evening twilight on one of the two days I was lucky to have clear skies all night during the 2010 Persid meteor shower.

  My location,used by the Rockford, Il. Astronomy club, was in a Wisconsin Transportation Department Quarry just north of the Illinois border, and north-west of Rockford, IL. It is usually 5.5 dark and has good views, for the midwest, to the north.  I arrived before sunset to get my equipment set-up.

  While looking at the bowl of the big dipper, I noticed a white, star-like object, with a size and magnitude similar to the four bowl stars, in the center of the bowl. It remained centered in the bowl, not getting brighter, or weaker, for 10-20 seconds before it occurred to me that it wasn't moving in it's position.  Hmmm, maybe a new Nova, and better than KT ERI !! I turned away to walk over to the car and get my camera, taking several more seconds. As I returned and attached my camera to one of the tripods, it vanished. Nuts!!

  After midnight, I captured good shots of several persid meteors, one leaving just under the radiant arm position, and showing an excellent track back to the radiant source. But, I have always been disappointed that I failed to capture a shot of whatever it was that I saw, motionless for so many seconds, in the center of the bowl of the big dipper during evening twilight. Upon further review, I found nothing mentioned on the AAVSO site.

As Ever,
Orin Keplinger near Chicago
______________________________________________________
----- Original Message -----
From: prospector at znet.com
To: "Meteor science and meteor observing" <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 10:51:05 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: (meteorobs) Point Meteor or Flaring Satelite

This moring at 05:32 local time I was walking under open trees and saw a
point meteor or flaring satelite just one hand length to the left of and
slightly lower than Jupitor. Jupitor was slightly brighter too, so
whaterver it was, it was -3 to -4. It lasted a few seconds, coming in from
the SSW, I couldn't detect any movement and no lights from an airplane, I
did not have my binoculars with me whcih could have resolved the problem of
identiy. Checking two satelite sites produced nothing at that time or area.
Further checking by satelite experts may prove it was a flaring satelite
which happen much more often than point meteors of any magnetude, but I
wanted to post this to perhaps generate other reports.

                                    Dave English
                               Oceanside, California
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