(meteorobs) July 28/29 2016 observation summary from North Florida - An unforgettable all-nighter!

[Paul Jones]

Greetings again all,
    Once again our skies locally were solid overcast after darkness fell
last night and remained so until well after midninght.  It looked hopeless
for observing, but being the intrepid die-hard that I am, I ventured dawn
to Matanzas Inlet anyway.

     Once there, I had to wait for over an hour and a half for skies to
begin to clear, but they finally did and once they did, it didn't take long
for the sky (and Earthly) show to begin.  And what a show it was all the
way around, all the way to dawn's early light!!

     I have yet to decipher all the notes for the morning, but here are a
few of the more memorable highlights of the session:

- a stunning minus 5, turquoise sporadic fireball skimming along the NW
horizon
-  a -2 magnitude alpha Capricornid
-  a couple of - 1 magnitude South delta Aquariids (SDAs) and an SDA
observed SDA rate that approached 20 per hour!
- numerous bright and colorful Perseids - two of them reaching -1 in
magnitude
- A total of over 80 counted and casually observed meteors
- another nice shared observing session with fellow ACAC member Jeff Corder
- a magnificent and unexpected view of Aldebaran being occulted by the 24%
sunlit waning gibbous moon
-  the opportunity to play "Good Samaritan" to a group of Matanzas Inlet
flounder fishermen who accidentally locked themselves out of their truck

     It's all in a morning's "work" down at the "meteor (and flounder
fishing) capitol of the world": - Matanzas Inlet, Florida...;o)!

More to come later, when I can get to deciphering all of this stuff!

a tired Paul J in North Florida
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