(meteorobs) Perseids by the light of the silvery Supermoon

[Bruce McCurdy]

My original report seems to have been lost in the aether, so I am resending
a slightly revised version with apologies in advance to the list if
duplication occurs.

 

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, spotting 31 meteors including 13 Perseids in 2 hours, then
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 Aug 12 session 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. Nonetheless, I enjoyed two more superb Kappa Cygnids,
majestically slow streakers of mag -3 and -2, while my only Capricornid of
the three sessions combined turned out to be a -3 beauty.  

 

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 FM
tuning 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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