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Re: (meteorobs) NAMN Target Shower: October 1996
On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Mark Davis wrote:
> The NAMN target shower for October is the Orionids. Although the morning of peak
> activity will be hampered somewhat by moonlight, activity from this shower
> may be seen throughout most of the month which insures some periods of
> moon-free observing. The Orionids are active October 2 to November 7 and
> reach maximum activity on October 21 from a radiant of 095 +16. But the
> shower is known to exhibit several submaxima which may occur anytime between
> October 20-24.
>
Is there any clear picture of what happened with the Orionids on October
17, 1993? I was attending a star party/astronomy convention on Mt. Hood
when we noticed some unusual Orionid activity. (Unusual in that we
expected only a few meteors, but between 8h and 12h UT there were one or
two every time we turned our heads skyward from the telescopes!) The night
was great for deep-sky observing, and as I had the rare opportunity to
view through large telescopes, I chose this over lying down and making
meteor counts. Stupid me!
After a couple of us had posted anecdotal accounts to sci.astro.amateur,
I received an e-mail from Juergen Rendtel asking if I had any
quantitative data. Apparently, there were some other reports of enhanced
activity. Of course, I didn't have any quantitative data to offer. My
perception was that the observed hourly rate for Orionids would have been
around 40 for a single observer, but this was just a WAG. So, was anyone
else watching the Orionids on this date?
--
Wes Stone <wstone@lclarkdot edu> Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR
SKYTOUR Amateur Astronomy Hypertext:
http://www.lclarkdot edu/~wstone/skytour/skytour.html
References: