(meteorobs) Public Perseids

Bruce McCurdy bmccurdy at shaw.ca
Mon Aug 19 01:56:27 EDT 2013


I thought the group might enjoy hearing of an event held by the University
of Alberta's Devonian Botanic Gardens this past Friday (Aug 16), the second
annual Perseids Pyjama Party. :)

 

http://www.devonian.ualberta.ca/Events/PerseidsPyjamaParty.aspx 

 

Several hundred members of the public turned out under clear skies,
including a large number of families. Most notable absentees were the
Perseids themselves, no surprise to me given the triple whammy of five days
(!) after the peak, the pre-midnight position of the radiant, and the bright
gibbous Moon which rendered the Milky Way invisible at what was otherwise a
fairly decent site. (Needless to say, the date was chosen without
consultation of an actual astronomer, though you can be sure I provided some
feedback about do's and don'ts for future years.)

 

I personally observed just one Perseid during the allotted time, and I'm
pretty sure that's one more than many of the visiting public saw. 

 

Still, it was cool to see so much interest shown by the public. I gave a
talk which was well-attended and -received, and three other Edmonton Centre
RASCals hosted telescopes with views of the Moon and Nova Delphini among
other celestial attractions. We also had a splendid pass of ISS which
everyone present was able to see. Mostly folks seemed to enjoy themselves,
although I hope nobody will form lifetime impressions about the Perseids
being a bust. 

 

On my way home I stopped at a nearby dark site and did another 1.5 hours
Teff after moonset. By then some light cloud was rolling through which
compromised the sky to some degree, but I did manage to spy 16 meteors
including 7 Perseids. The best was a near-fireball of about mag -3 which
streaked above the Little Dipper from Polaris to Kochab, just as I was
looking in that direction so got the whole thing in my direct vision. It was
about the brightest Perseid I saw in 6 sessions this year - after all that
talk about Perseid fireballs from NASA, I saw zero unambiguous fireballs
among the 130 Perseids I recorded. 

 

Bruce

*****

 

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