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re: (meteorobs) persieds photo??

Well, Brian, as I understand it, in order to get a very short meteor, it 
has to be heading almost head on.
I don't know if there would be any statistics on this, though. These are 
hard for visual observers to see, since the usual means of detecting them 
is by the motion, which our eye-brian(haha) system is designed for. As a 
result, point meteors are difficult to notice unless they are very bright. 
Perhaps some telescopic meteor observers might have some statistics. 
Another possibility is that a meteor flared for a short distance along it's 
path, making it bright enough to be photographed only in that 
area...dot depending on what film you used, only the brightest meteors are 
going to be recorded. Other possibilities....satellites catching the sun, 
lightening bugs   hard to tell. One queestion (other than film speed and 
lens f/ratio) is 
was it nearly at the Perseid radiant that night. Can you give the date, and 
(the hard part) figure out from a star atlas what the coordinates were? We 
might have some better guesses then. Heck just be glad you got 
something...I know people that spent all night shooting and got nothin, 
nada, zip, zero, nil,....and
ZILCH

Wayne
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Original Text
From: brianc@tfsksudot net (Brian), on 8/28/96 4:03 PM:
To: <meteorobs@latradedot com>

        During the persieds a couple of weeks ago I decided to set my
camera up and open the shutter for a while.  I had thought I might have
gotten one rather nice meteor but when the film was developed I had nothing
but a bunch of stars streaking across my print.  In playing around one
night I scanned in one of the prints and got blowing up areas of the print
and noticed one very small dim object that streaked a very short straight
line that didn't follow the stars path I double checked the print with a
magnifier and sure enough.  I was just curious if this is and how many VERY
VERY short lived meteors they are.  I mean in a 3 minute exposure in the
northern sky the stars streaked more then this did.
Brian