(meteorobs) New here...

[rmbehr at istar.ca]

Hello everyone,

Just recently joined this list, happy to see more people like me who  
enjoy the "sparklies"!!  The short bio:  middle-aged woman whose hobby  
is photography, got drawn into shooting the night sky after attending  
talks by local astronomer Terrence Dickinson showing what one can get  
with long exposures, remembering how when teenagers older brother  
would recruit me  to help carry gear to his observatory, now back into  
astronomy and a member of the local chapter of RASC.  Living near  
Kingston, Ontario, where the weather has turned to crap ever since I  
started pointing my camera upwards after sunset a few years ago.   
Didn't help when I bought a 12 inch Skymaster truss dobsonian, it does  
a great job of gathering dust.

Anyway, back to the subject of sparklies:  Bruce, I feel your pain and  
share your grumpiness.  Perseids clouded out, Orionids clouded out,  
Leonids clouded out, now brutal cold has teamed up with the clouds and  
moon to ruin the Geminids.  Came home last night around 10:00 p.m.  
after enjoying a henfest Christmas gathering, stood in the driveway  
for a couple minutes, saw one meteor skipping between the gathering  
clouds.  Realized after 2 minutes that "it ain't happening out here",  
not only -15C but a bit of breeze making the windchill unbearable,  
headed back inside to stoke up the woodstove.  Set the alarm for 3:00  
a.m. when Orion and Gemini head around to the west and can be seen in  
a narrow band out my diningroom window, wanted to put the camera on  
set-it-and-forget-it to run a continuing series, hopefully catching a  
meteor or two, but the clouds had thickened up considerably.  *sigh*  
One can only hope for clear skies during the Quadrantids, and maybe,  
maybe, maybe something will happen when Earth goes spinning through  
the path of the now-defunct ISON.  Dare we hope it gave us something  
useful on the incoming run?

RoseMarie