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(meteorobs) Re::Florida Aug 12/13
Started observing 231AM local with S half of sky filled with stationary
clouds. They moved N after an hour and I quit at 335AM. Had LM7.3 sky
while clear, was very good.
Norman McLeod
631-735UT 1.07 LM7.3 14PER 1SDA 1NDA 2KCG 1CAP 4SPOR
A lot of bright ones. 632 yellow PER -3 train 3
728 blue NDA -6 completely inside a thin cloud
733 white-blue SPOR -4
Also an orange PER -2 train 1 mid-hr and a casual blue PER -2 right
after I ended, behind some haze.
Weather looks cruddy now. Last night was clear in town which induced me to
go out. Always frustrating to get to a remote site only to have it cloudy.
Doubt if I will attempt any more observing until some real weather
improvement takes place.
Distance to my observing site, in the SE corner of inland community Lehigh
Acres, is 25 miles; driveable in about 35 minutes. Lehigh is a hundred
square miles of mostly empty roads for future development. I don't foresee
all of this area ever developing, as most people want to crowd in near the
coast. Probably only 20% of Lehigh has houses even now. The key to getting
the type of dark sky I have is living well away from large cities. I am
midway between Miami and Tampa-St.Petersburg and out of reach of both their
light-domes. Fort Myers lights the west to as high as 45 degrees on nights
with a little haze, but just 20 degrees on really clear nights.
In data recording I often reach for the paper and just write without looking
away. Try to hit a different spot each time. I usually wait until I have 3
or 4 meteors, then write. Hence, my dead time is negligible. Times are
noted only for -3's or brighter, changes in conditions, and passage of
minute 26 as my local hour ending. I have never been interested in
photography so I don't need the time for every meteor. I keep my papers
and charts covered with a sheet of cardboard to keep them dry, or sometimes
a shirt or towel, or even a section of newspaper. Being on a smooth asphalt
cul-de-sac is some help, keeping the air warmer and drier than over grass.
No excuse to let papers get soaked! Cover them up with something.
Mosquitoes haven't been too terribly bad. A sheet of cardboard the size of
a pizza box lid works well for fanning. Also helps defog glasses and just
cool off a little. Nights are about 78 degrees, sometimes higher. Would be
nice to have it about 5 degrees cooler. Inland is cooler than in town or on
the beach at night; the beach is having lows of 80-82 now. I wear long
pants and get under a sheet to block off mosquitoes, then fan my exposed parts.
For the Leonids of 1966 in N Florida I wrote in rows across my paper without
looking away. Some overlap did occur, I sorted it out the next day. 591
meteors seen in 4 hours; the final hour alone had 361. I got all their
magnitudes; gave up on times when the rate passed 4/minute. There were no
battery-powered tape recorders back then. Nowadays I am hesitating to use a
recorder any more unless I invest in a fairly expensive one. The cheapies
are too unreliable.
Norman