(meteorobs) Perseids by the light of the silvery Supermoon

[BRUCE MCCURDY]

I've had two observing sessions since my last report July 29. Went out to the Blackfoot site at Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve after moonset on the morning of Aug 6, and snatched a couple of hours from the city limits on the morning of Aug 12 under bright supermoonlight. Had planned to also go out on the 12/13 for the post-peak show with Ross Sinclair, but we were totally clouded out. Fortunately, I had gotten my "contingency sample" on the 11/12, making this my 27th straight year of observing Perseids within 24 hours plus or minus of the peak.   

That occasion had an auspicious beginning when I saw a beautiful 4-second kappa Cygnid literally a couple of seconds after I left my house as I was walking down the porch steps towards the car. With the bright Moon rampant in the south, I headed due north of my home, got to just outside the city limits (about 12 km from my home rather than the usual 55), and found an isolated spot on an E-W road with zero artificial light trespass of any description. I settled in the shrubbery on the south side of the road to block the moon and most of the light dome of Edmonton, and concentrated on the northern half of the sky, with Polaris being in the centre of my chosen field of view. Even so, the limiting magnitude was pretty poor at just 4.3, as I could *barely* see the arc of 3 stars of about that magnitude between Polaris and Kochab in Ursa Minor.

Not surprisingly, Perseid counts were not great, some 29 seen in two hours Teff, along with 3 kappa Cygnids and 5 sporadics (a couple of which were from southern, but otherwise unidentifiable, radiants). Of those 37 meteors, 11 were of negative magnitude, topped by a brilliant silvery-white Perseid of mag -6 that dropped straight down from the radiant, leaving a fading train for 7-8 seconds. Colourful meteors were very few and far between, while trains were very brief, both no doubt affected by the brilliant moonlight.

Unlike my previous session at Blackfoot where it was so quiet at times I could hear my own pulse, this spot was closer to "civilization" so there was a constant hum of traffic, dogs barking, etc. I was unable to find a good station with "clean static" for radio monitoring, so I opted to put in my ear buds and listen to some contemplative music. The obvious choice from my iPhone collection was an album by the great American jazz trumpeter Jon Hassell, entitled "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street". An appropriate title for the night after the much-hyped "Supermoon"! It's based on a poem by the 13th century Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi that begins:

    Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
    I took it as a sign to start singing
    Falling up into the bowl of sky   

Somehow seemed appropriate to the task (and the pleasure) at hand. 

Bruce
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