(meteorobs) Observation April 21/22 2012

Fri May 4 01:13:41 EDT 2012

Hello,

Here's my report for the night of the Lyrids.  Despite an unfavourable weather forecast, Raymond Dubois and I took our chances and we travelled to Pembroke (almost 2 hours drive west of Ottawa) in the hopes of finding clearing skies there.  With any luck, the front would barely pass by that area late in the evening, and we'd see an opening before we'd see the weather deteriorate again in the morning.

I arrived at Soike Road just before 10PM.  This is a quiet stretch of farm access road, which is unpaved and well isolated.  Raymond arrived minutes after me, just as I was re-positioning my car within the turnaround point.  The sky looked mainly overcast and rather depressing, with rather strong and cold wind gusts (temp at 0C).  We gradually saw what appeared to be clearing skies, with the zodiacal light visible in the west and, a somewhat lesser amount of low moving clouds.  I gazed casually for a bit... saw a very night mag -2 sporadic at the zenith, followed moments later by a possible Lyrid!  We both went into action to setup our cameras for the night.  Unfortunately, the clearing vanished... clouds took over the entire sky, and down went our hopes for a long, productive night of observing.  Out in the distance, towards Pembroke, we could see the front, with clearer skies towards the horizon.  Binoculars showed some stars down there... However, the clouds just kept coming above us.  We briefly debated packing everything up and driving further west... But it was getting late and I wasn't entirely confident that it would help all that much.  Instead, we opted to stay put, throw a blanket over the cameras to keep them from dewing up, and go to sleep.  Raymond snoozed in his car while I wrapped myself up in the sleeping bag outside on my lawn chair.  My alarm clock was set to wake me up every 45 min or so.  The night went on with virtually no changes to the sky... I'd occasionally spot star or two poking in between thick clouds but that was it.  The wind was now more intermittent than it was at the beginning.  The silence was sometimes interrupted by a weird "PECK...PECK.....PECK" noise out in the field.  I wasn't sure what I was hearing.  I was really starting to fade away, when my alarm went off, at 2:50am startling me from a much deeper sleep at that point in the night.  The sky overhead seems to be clearing!  I can see stars to the north-east, where the clouds have been coming from all night long.  More alarmingly, my nose caught the sharp and unmistakable whif of a skunk.  I start to get up, slowly, as I was still trying to wake up... I notice that I had left my cookies next to me on my small camp table... not a good thing.  I put the food out in the car, knowing well that I do not want to attract the unwanted visitor ;)  I look up, and WOW... the sky is really clearing at last!!  A mag -1 Lyrid (LYR) flashes to the south.  Minutes later, just as I retrieved my tape recorder, I look up and see, by chance, a gorgeous FIREBALL...a blue-white mag -4 LYR at the zenith with a 10 sec train!  Excited, and now fully alert, I wake up Raymond and I start my two cameras.  I hurry back into my lawn chair to start formal observing, knowing that I have little time left before morning dawn.

In the hour and a half that followed, under mag 6.5 skies, I enjoyed a pretty good Lyrid showing, with as many as 17 seen... not including the 7 sporadics and one NCY, for a total of 25 meteors.  What was most surprising was the brightness of the Lyrids -- With an average limiting magnitude of +1.35, they were definitely skewed to the bright side.  The nicest one seen during this hour was a flaring mag -3 Lyrid that left a 1 sec train.

I signed off as the sky got bright from morning twilight.  We both chose to go to sleep.  As I faded away, a chorus of birds, ducks and other things just kept getting louder.  The "PECK...PECK" noise returned, but this time it was very constant, and followed by equally constant "gobblegobblegobble" sounds .. I was gone...perhaps dreaming ;)  A few hours later, after waking up, Raymond confirmed that there had indeed been a flock of Wild Turkeys passing through in the field :)

Clear skies,
Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario

DATE: April 21/22 2012
BEGIN: 07:26 UT (03:26 EDT) END: 9:00 UT (05:00 EDT)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -76.78 West; Lat: 45.68 North
Observing site: Soike Road, Cobden, Ontario, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: talking clock/tape recorder, cord align
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OBSERVED SHOWERS:
Lyrids (LYR) - 18:08 (272) +33
Antihelion (ANT) - 14:56 (224) -16
Sigma Leonids (SLE) - 13:40 (205) +04
h Virginids (HVR) - 14:16 (214) -11 
Nu Cygnids (NCY) - 20:44 (311) +42
SPO (sporadics)
----------------------------------------------------------

OBSERVING PERIODS: 0 = none seen; / = shower not observed

PERIOD(UT)___FIELD_____Teff___F______LM____SPO_LYR_ANT_NCY_SLE_HVR

07:26-08:26__186 +47___0.99___1.00___6.55___6___11__0___1___0___0
08:26-09:00__207 +42___0.56___1.00___5.89___1___6___0___0___0___0

TOTALS:________________1.56_________________7___17__0___1___0___0  = 25

Notes: The first column (Period UT) refers to observing periods, in Universal Time. The second column (Field) is the area in in the sky where I centered my field of view. The third column (TEFF) Teff is simply the total time during the observing session spent actually watching the sky. Breaks and/or dead time are not included in the reported Teff. It is reported in decimal format such that a 60 minute observing session would be reported as Teff = 1.00. The column (LM) is the average naked eye limiting magnitude seen.  All following columns indicate the number of meteors for each shower observed.  For more info, see: http://www.namnmeteors.org/guidechap2.html
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MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS:

SHOWER
_____-3__-2__-1___0__+1__+2__+3__+4__+5______AVE

LYR___1___0___0___3___7___1___3___2___0_____+1.35
NCY___0___0___0___0___0___0___1___0___0_____+3.00
SPO___0___0___0___1___0___0___0___3___3_____+3.86

Note: Magnitude -8 is comparable to a quarter moon, magnitude -4 with the planet Venus, magnitude -1 with the brightest star Sirius, magnitude +2 to +3 with most average naked eye stars and magnitude +6 to +7 are the faintest stars the naked eye can see under typical dark conditions. A meteor of at least magnitude -3 is considered a fireball (IMO definition). The above table contains the magnitudes from all observed meteors, and the average (last column) for showers.
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SKY OBSCURED (FOV) (UT):  None

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Dead time: 0.33 min (breaks)

Breaks (UT): 7:38 (20 sec)